The language we call English was first brought to the north sea coasts of England in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., by seafaring people from Denmark and the northwestern coasts of present-day Germany and the Netherlands. These immigrants spoke a cluster of related dialects falling within the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. Their language began to develop its own distinctive features in isolation from the continental Germanic languages, and by 600 A.D. had developed into what we call Old English or Anglo-Saxon, covering the territory of most of modern England.
New waves of Germanic invaders and settlers came from Norway and Denmark starting in the late 8th century. The more violent of these were known as Vikings, sea-faring plunderers who retained their ancient pagan gods and attacked settlements and churches for gold and silver. They spoke a northern Germanic dialect similar to, yet different in grammar from Anglo-Saxon. In the 11th century, the attacks became organized, state-sponsored military invasions and England was even ruled for a time by the kings of Denmark and Norway. The Scandinavian influence on the language was strongest in the north and lasted for a full 600 years, although English seems to have been adopted by the settlers fairly early on.
The Norman Invasion and Conquest of 1066 was a cataclysmic event that brought new rulers and new cultural, social and linguistic influences to the British Isles. The Norman French ruling minority dominated the church, government, legal, and educational systems for three centuries. The Norman establishment used French and Latin, leaving English as the language of the illiterate and powerless majority. During this period English adopted thousands of words from Norman French and from Latin, and its grammar changed rather radically. By the end of that time, however, the aristocracy had adopted English as their language and the use and importance of French gradually faded. The period from the Conquest to the reemergence of English as a full-fledged literary language is called Middle English. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, in Middle English in the late 1300s.
William Caxton set up the first printing press in Britain at the end of the 15th century. The arrival of printing marks the point at which the language began to take the first steps toward standardization and its eventual role as a national language. The period from 1500 to about 1650 is called Early Modern English, a period during which notable sound changes, syntactic changes and lexical enrichment took place. The Great English Vowel Shift, which systematically shifted the phonetic values of all the long vowels in English, occurred during this period. Word order became more fixed in a subject-verb-object pattern, and English developed a complex auxiliary verb system. A rush of new vocabulary from the classical languages, the modern European languages, and more distant trading partners such as the countries of Asian minor and the Middle East entered the language as the renaissance influences of culture and trade and the emerging scientific community of Europe took root in England.
Shakespeare wrote prolifically during the late 1500s and early 1600s and, like Chaucer, took the language into new and creative literary territory. His influence on English drama and poetry continued to grow after his death in 1616 and he has never been surpassed as the best known and most read poet/playwright of modern English.
The King James Bible was published in 1611, the culmination of at least a century of efforts to bring a Bible written in the native language of the people into the Church establishment and into people's homes. Among the common people, whose contact with literature often did not go far past the Bible, the language of the scriptures as presented in this version commissioned by King James I was deeply influential, due in part to its religious significance, but also to its literary quality. Its simple style and use of native vocabulary had a surpassing beauty that still resonates today.
By the 1700s almost all of the modern syntactic patterns of English were in place and the language is easily readable by modern speakers. Colonization of new territories by the newly united Kingdom of Great Britain spread English to the far corners of the globe and brought cargoes of still more loanwords from those far-flung places. At this point English began to develop its major world dialectal varieties, some of which would develop into national standards for newly independent colonies. By the 21st century, as the language of international business, science, and popular culture, English has become the most important language on the planet.
Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxons first came to England in the 4th century AD when they began raiding the east coast. The most important of the Anglo Saxon tribes were the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. In about 450 the Anglo Saxons began to settle in England. By the 6th century the Jutes had occupied Kent and Hampshire, the Saxons had established the kingdoms of Sussex, Wessex, Middle sex and Essex, and the Angles were in control of the northern and eastern areas of England.
In his book, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bede argued that by the 8th century most people living north of the Humber were descended from the Angles. This included the East Angles (East Anglia), Middle Angles (East Midlands) and the Mercians (Midlands).
After Oswald of Northumbria defeated Cadwalader at Hexham in 633, he claimed authority over all Anglo-Saxons. In the 8th century power moved to Mercia when King Offa established overall control over most of the country. The following century Alfred the Great of Wessex was able to claim the overlordship of Anglo-Saxon England.
The renewal of Scandinavian raids led to a Dane, Canute, becoming king of England in 1016. Edward the Confessor, the eldest son of Ethelred the Unready, restored the Anglo Saxons to power in 1042, although some were unhappy with the number of Norman advisers that he brought to England. Edward's successor, Harold Godwinson, was killed at the Battle of Hastings and was therefore the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.
Anglo Saxon England
Beowulf
Beowulf Summary
The epic poem begins with a brief genealogy of the Danes. Scyld Shefing was the first great king of the Danes, known for his ability to conquer enemies. Scyld becomes the great-grandfather of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes during the events of Beowulf. Hrothgar, like his ancestors before him, is a good king, and he wishes to celebrate his reign by building a grand hall called Heorot.
Once the hall is finished, Hrothgar holds a large feast. The revelry attracts the attentions of the monster Grendel, who decides to attack during the night. In the morning, Hrothgar and his thanes discover the bloodshed and mourn the lost warriors. This begins Grendel's assault upon the Danes.
Twelve years pass. Eventually the news of Grendel's aggression on the Danes reaches the Geats, another tribe. A Geat thane, Beowulf, decides to help the Danes; he sails to the land of the Danes with his best warriors. Upon their arrival, Hrothgar's thane Wulfgar judges the Geats worthy enough to speak with Hrothgar. Hrothgar remembers when he helped Beowulf's father Ecgtheow settle a feud; thus, he welcomes Beowulf's help gladly.
Heorot is filled once again for a large feast in honor of Beowulf. During the height of the celebration, the Danish queen Wealhtheow comes forth, bearing the mead-cup. She presents it first to Hrothgar, then to the rest of the hall, and finally to Beowulf. As he receives the cup, Beowulf tells Wealhtheow that he will kill Grendel or be killed in Heorot. This simple declaration moves Wealhtheow and the Danes, and the revelry continues. Finally, everyone retires. Before he leaves, Hrothgar promises to give Beowulf everything if he can defeat Grendel. Beowulf says that he will leave God to judge the outcome. He and his thanes sleep in the hall as they wait for Grendel.
Eventually Grendel arrives at Heorot as usual, hungry for flesh. Beowulf watches carefully as Grendel eats one of his men. When Grendel reaches for Beowulf, Beowulf grabs Grendel's arm and doesn't let go. Grendel writhes about in pain as Beowulf grips him. He thrashes about, causing the hall to nearly collapse. Soon Grendel tears away, leaving his arm in Beowulf's grasp. He slinks back to his lair in the moors and dies.
The Danes, meanwhile, consider Beowulf as the greatest hero in Danish history. In Heorot, Grendel's claw is nailed to the ceiling as a trophy. Hrothgar says that Beowulf will never lack for riches, and Beowulf graciously thanks him. The horses and men of the Geats are all richly adorned, in keeping with Hrothgar's wishes.
Another party is held to celebrate Beowulf's victory. Wealhtheow presents a necklace to Hrothgar. Next she presents many golden treasures to Beowulf, such as necklaces, cups, and rings. Soon the feast ends, and everyone sleeps peacefully.
In the night, Grendel's mother approaches the hall, wanting vengeance for her son. The warriors prepared for battle, leaving enough time for Grendel's mother to grab one of Hrothgar's counselors [Aeschere] and run away. When Beowulf is summoned to the hall, he finds Hrothgar in mourning for his friend Aeschere. Hrothgar tells Beowulf where the creatures like Grendel live‹in a shadowy, fearful land within the moors.
Beowulf persuades Hrothgar to ride with him to the moors. When they reach the edge of the moors, Beowulf calls for his armor, takes a sword from Unferth, and dives into the lake. After a long time, Beowulf reaches the bottom of the lake, where Grendel's mother is waiting to attack. Beowulf swings his sword, but discovers that it cannot cut her, so he tosses it away. They then wrestle until Beowulf spies a large sword nearby. He grabs it by the hilt and swings---killing Grendel's mother by slicing off her head. Still in a rage, Beowulf finds the dead Grendel in the lair and cuts off his head as a trophy.
As they wait, the Danes have given up all hope for Beowulf because he has been underwater for such a long time. They are shocked when Beowulf returns with Grendel's head and the hilt of the sword (which melted with the heat of Grendel's blood). They bear the hero back to Heorot, where another celebration takes place.
Beowulf recounts his battle; Hrothgar praises him and gives him advice on being a king. A grand feast follows, and Beowulf is given more priceless treasures. The next morning, the Geats look forward to leaving Denmark. Hrothgar praises Beowulf and promises that their lands will have an alliance forever. As the Geats leave, Hrothgar finds himself wishing Beowulf would never leave.
The Geats return with much rejoicing to their homeland, where their king Hygelac and his queen Hygd greet them. Beowulf tells his lord the events of his trip to Denmark. Hygelac praises Beowulf for his bravery and gives him half the kingdom. They rule the kingdom together in peace and prosperity. Hygelac is killed in a battle soon after, so Beowulf becomes king of the Geats and rules the kingdom well.
In the fiftieth year of Beowulf's reign, a monster arises to terrorize the Geats. A treasure trove [cache!] was left by an ancient civilization, which guarded it jealously until only one member of the race was left. After the last person's death, a fire-breathing dragon found the treasure and guarded it for three hundred years. One day, a slave stumbled upon the treasure and stole a cup as an offering to his lord. The dragon awakened to find something missing from his cache and began his rampage upon the Geats.
One day, Beowulf learns that this dragon has destroyed his own great hall. This attack sends him into deep thought. Soon he orders a shield to use for battle, but not without a heavy heart at what may happen to him. The servant who stole the cup leads them to the lair.
Beowulf leads the charge to the dragon's cave. The shield protects him from the dragon's flames, but his men flee in fear, leaving only one man behind. This man is Wiglaf, Beowulf's only loyal kinsman. Wiglaf becomes angry but swears that he will stay by Beowulf's side.
Just then the dragon rushes up to them. Beowulf and the dragon swing at each other three times, finally landing mortal blows upon each other the last time. The dragon is beheaded, but Beowulf is bitten and has a fatal poison from the dragon flowing through his body as a result. Wiglaf bathes his lord's body in seawater as Beowulf speaks about the treasure. He says that Wiglaf should inherit it as his kinsman; then he dies.
After his death, the cowards return, to be severely chastised by Wiglaf. He sends a messenger to tell the people of their king's death. The messenger envisions the joy of the Geats' enemies upon hearing of the death of Beowulf. He also says that no man shall ever have the treasure for which Beowulf fought. Wiglaf and Beowulf's thanes toss the dragon's body into the sea. They place the treasure inside a mound with Beowulf's body and mourn for "the ablest of all world-kings." OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE
LITERARY BACKGROUND
Introduction:The Anglo-Saxon or Old English period goes from the invasion of Celtic England by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in the first half of the fifth century up till the conquest in 1066 by William of Normandy.
Many Anglo-Saxon poems, in the form they are extant, were not written down until perhaps two and one-half centuries after their compositions, since scribal effort had been spent on Latin, the new language of culture. This was possible thanks to the further development of the programs of King Alfred in the late tenth century and the Benedictine Revival of the early eleventh century. After their conversion to Christianity in the seventh century the Anglo-Saxons began to develop a written literature; before that period it had been oral. The Church and the Benedictine monastic foundations and their Latin culture played an important part in the development of Anglo-Saxon England cultural life, literacy and learning. No poetry surely pre-Christian in composition survives. The survival of poetry was due to the Church: it was the result of the tenth-century monastic revival. The Benedictine Revival was the crowning of a process that had begun in the sixth century and had produced a large body of English prose by the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066. Anglo-Saxon England is thought to have been rich in poetry, but very little of it survives. Most of the available corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature, little more than 30,000 lines in all, survives in just four manuscript books.
From the Anglo-Saxon period dates what is known as Old English literature, composed in the vernacular Anglo-Saxon. It includes early national poetry: Pagan Epic Poetry and Pagan Elegies,Old English Christian Poetry,Latin Writings and Old English Prose.
1. Pagan Epic Poetry.
BEOWULF is the chief Anglo-Saxon epic poem. It is wholly mysterious. No one knows who wrote it, or when, or where, or why. Beowulf is a narrative poem of 3,182 lines, transmitted in a manuscript written between the tenth and the twelfth centuries, but much older. To some it is the symbol of the antiquity and continuity of English poetry. But it never mentions people who are known to have lived in Britain. All its allusions are Continental or Scandinavian. Apart from Beowulf, the only surviving remains of early national epic poetry are a fragment, Deor's Lament, The Finnesburgh Fragment, (50 lines), and two short fragments (63 lines together) of Waldere, The Battle of Maldon, The Battle of Brunanburh
2. Pagan Lyrical and Elegiac Poems.
There is little else surviving of Anglo-Saxon literature which makes direct contact with the older heroic view. Deor's Lament, an interesting poem of forty-two lines, is the complaint of a minstrel who,after years of service to his lord, has been supplanted by a rival, Heorrenda. He comfort himself by recounting the trials of Germanic heroes, all of which were eventually overcome. But the main interest of the poem lies in its combination of this kind of subject matter with a personal, elegiac note. Together with Deor's Lament, there are other Anglo-Saxon elegies: The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Ruin, The Wife's Lament, The Husband's Message,Wulf, and The Ruin
Elegies is no more than a label of convenience applied to a small group of poems not unlike each other in theme and tone. In Saxon poetry, the lyric mood is always the elegiac. The so-called elegies are poems where the topic itself is loss: loss of a lord, loss of a loved one, the loss of fine buildings fallen into decay.
RELIGIOUS POETRY
Old English Christian Poetry. Religious poetry seems to have flourished in northern England-Northumbria-throughout the eighth century, though most of it has survived only in West Saxon transcriptions of the late tenth century. Monks produced not only manuscripts, masonry, sculpture and missionaries but also a lot of Christian poetry. Much of it consists of retellings of books and episodes from the Old Testament. Much of this religious poetry is anonymous, but the names of two poets are known: CAEDMON(d. c. 670), the first English poet known by name, and CYNEWULF(late eighth or early ninth century). They wrote on biblical and religious themes. According to Bede Caedmon became the founder of a school of Christian poetry and the he was the first to use the traditional metre diction for Christian religious poetry. This period of Old English poetry is called "Caedmonian". All the old religious poems that were not assigned to Caedmon were invariably given to Cynewulf, the poet of the second phase of Old English Christian poetry. With Cynewulf, Anglo-Saxon religious poetry moves beyond biblical paraphrase into the didactic, the devotional, and the mystical. The four Anglo-Saxon Christian poems which have the name of Cynewulf are Christ, Juliana, Elene, and The Fates of the Apostles. All these poems possess both a high degree of literary craftsmanship and a note of mystical contemplation which sometimes rises to a high level of religious passion. One of the most remarkable poems written under the influence of the school of Cynewulf is The Dream of the Rood,by some it is attributed to the same Cynewulf, Andreas, and The Phoenix. Another significant Anglo-Saxon religious poem is the fragmentary Judith. The final part of Guthlac, a poem of 1370 lies, is probably Cynewulf's.Old English Prose: Alfred.
The glory of Alfred's reign is Alfred himself(849-901) writes George Simpson. It was under his influence that the earlier poetic works, which had almost all been written in the Northumbrian dialect, were transcribed into the language of the West saxons. King Alfred played an important role in this literary movement. He surrounded himself with scholars and learned men, learnt Latin after he was grown up, and began to translate the works which seemed to him most apt to civilize his people. In this way he became the father of English prose-writers. He himself is credited with a translation of the Universal History of Orosius. He translated (or ordered to translate) Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the Angles. Much more important, and among the best of Alfred's works, is the version of Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae. The first great book in English prose is The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, inspired though not written by Alfred. In some monasteries casual notes of important events had been made; but under Alfred's encouragement there is a systematic revision of the earlier records and a larger survey of West Saxon history. The great Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a series of annals which start with an outline of English history from Julius Caesar's invasion to the middle of the fifth century and continues to 1154.
Another important prose work and source of information about King Alfred's life is a short biographical work, the the Life of King Alfred,written in Latin and attributed to Asser (d. 910), Bishop of Sherborne (892-910), whom Alfred called from Wales to aid him in the re-establishing of learning. Asser also wrote a Chronicle of English History for the years 849 to 887.
CAEDMON AND CYNEWULF
Caedmon, (flourished 670), entered the monastery of Streaneshalch (Whitby) between 658 and 680, when he was an elderly man. According to Bede he was an unlearned herdsman who received suddenly, in a vision, the power of song, and later put into English verses passages translated to him from the Scriptures. Bede tells us that Caedmon turned into English the story of Genesis and Exodus. The name Caedmon has been conjectured to be Celtic. The poems assumed to be Caedmon poems Caedmon are: Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. But critical research has proved the ascription to be impossible. Perhaps the Caedmon songs were used by later singers and left their spirit in the poems that remains; but of the originals described by Bede we have no trace. The only work which can be attributed to him is the short "Hymn of Creation," quoted by Bede himself. This is all we possess of the first known English poet. It survives in several manuscripts of Bede in various dialects.Cynewulf:
Cynewulf (late 8th or 9th century) was identified, not certainly, but probably, with a Cynewulf who was Bishop of Lindisfarne and lived in the middle of the eighth century. He was a wandering singer or poet who lived a gay and secular life. The accuracy of some of his battle scenes and seascapes showed that he had fought on land and sailed the seas. Finally, after a dream in which he had a vision of the Holy Rood, he changed his life, became a religious poet, sang of Christ, the apostles, and the saints. His work represents an advance in culture upon the more primitive Caedmonian poems.The poems attributed to him are: Juliana, Elene, The Fates of the Apostles, and Christ II.
CAEDMON'S HYMN
The following nine lines are all of what survives that can reasonably be attributed to him. Bede quotes them in Chapter 24 of his History. Bede adds that these lines are only the general sense, not the actual words that Caedmon sang in his dream. Caedmon's gift remained an oral one and was devoted to sacred subjects."Now must we praise" Now must we praise of heaven's kingdom the Keeper
Of the Lord the power and his Wisdom
The work of the Glory-Father, as he of marvels each,
The eternal Lord, the beginning established.
He first created of earth for the sons 5
Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator.
Then the middle-enclosure of mankind the Protector
The eternal Lord, thereafter made
For men, earth the Lord almighty.
(658-680)
Anglo-Norman Literature
Anglo-Norman Literature
Anglo-Norman Literature: - The French language (q.v.) came over to England with William the Conqueror. During the whole of the 12th century it shared with Latin the distinction of being the literary language of England, and it was in use at the court until the 14th century. It was not until the reign of Henry IV. that English became the native tongue of the kings of England. After the loss of the French provinces, schools for the teaching of French were established in England, among the most celebrated of which we may quote that of Marlborough. The language then underwent certain changes which gradually distinguished it from the French spoken in France; but, except for some graphical characteristics, from which certain rules of pronunciation are to be inferred, the changes to which the language was subjected were the individual modifications of the various authors, so that, while we may still speak of Anglo-Norman writers, an Anglo-Norman language, properly so called, gradually ceased to exist. The prestige enjoyed by the French language, which, in the 14th century, the author of the Manière de language calls "le plus bel et le plus gracious language et plus noble parler, apres latin d'escole, qui soit au monde et de touz genz mieulx prisée et amée que nul autre (quar Dieux le fist si douce et amiable principalement à l'oneur et loenge de luy mesmes.
Et pour ce il peut comparer au parler des angels du ciel, pour la grand doulceur et biaultée d'icel)," was such that it was not till 1363 that the chancellor opened the parliamentary session with an English speech. And although the Hundred Years' War led to a decline in the study of French and the disappearance of Anglo-Norman literature, the French language continued, through some vicissitudes, to be the classical language of the courts of justice until the 17th century. It is still the language of the Channel Islands, though there too it tends more and more to give way before the advance of English.
It will be seen from the above that the most flourishing period of Anglo-Norman literature was from the beginning of the 12th century to the end of the first quarter of the 13th. The end of this period is generally said to coincide with the loss of the French provinces to Philip Augustus, but literary and political history do not correspond quite so precisely, and the end of the first period would be more accurately denoted by the appearance of the history of William the Marshal in 1225 (published for the Societe de l'histoire de France, by Paul Meyer, 3 vols., 1891-1901). It owes its brilliancy largely to the protection accorded by Henry II. of England to the men of letters of his day. "He could speak French and Latin well, and is said to have known something of every tongue between'the Bay of Biscay and the Jordan.' He was probably the most highly educated sovereign of his day, and amid all his busy active life he never lost his interest in literature and intellectual discussion; his hands were never empty, they always had either a bow or a book" (Dict. of Nat. Biog.). Wace and Benoît de Sainte-More compiled their histories at his bidding, and it was in his reign that Marie de France composed her poems.
An event with which he was closely connected, viz. the murder of Thomas Becket, gave rise to a whole series of writings, some of which are purely Anglo-Norman. In his time appeared the works of Béroul and Thomas respectively, as well as some of the most celebrated of the Anglo-Norman romans d'aventure. It is important to keep this fact in mind when studying the different works which Anglo-Norman literature has left us. We will examine these works briefly, grouping them into narrative, didactic, hagiographic, lyric, satiric and dramatic literature.
Narrative Literature: (a) Epic and Romance. - The French epic came over to England at an early date. We know that the Chanson de Roland was sung at the battle of Hastings, and we possess Anglo-Norman MSS. of a few chansons de geste. The Pèlerinage de Charlemagne (Koschwitz, Altfranzösische Bibliothek, 1883) was, for instance, only preserved in an Anglo-Norman manuscript of the British Museum (now lost), although the author was certainly a Parisian. The oldest manuscript of the Chanson de Roland that we possess is also a manuscript written in England, and amongst the others of less importance we may mention La Chançun de Willame, the MS. of which has (June 1903) been published in facsimile at Chiswick (cf. Paul Meyer, Romania, xxxii. 597-618). Although the diffusion of epic poetry in England did not actually inspire any new chansons de geste, it developed the taste for this class of literature, and the epic style in which the tales of Horn, of Bovon de Hampton, of Guy of Warwick (still unpublished), of Waldef (still unpublished), and of Fulk Fitz Warine are treated, is certainly partly due to this circumstance.
Although the last of these works has come down to us only in a prose version, it contains unmistakable signs of a previous poetic form, and what we possess is really only a rendering into prose similar to the transformations undergone by many of the chansons de geste (cf. L. Brandin, Introduction to Fulk Fitz Warine, London, 1904).
The interinfluence of French and English literature can be studied in the Breton romances and the romans d'aventure even better than in the epic poetry of the period. The Lay of Orpheus is known to us only through an English imitation; the Lai du cor was composed by Robert Biket, an Anglo-Norman poet of the 12th century (Wulff, Lund, 1888). The lais of Marie de France were written in England, and the greater number of the romances composing the matière de Bretagne seem to have passed from England to France through the medium of Anglo-Norman. The legends of Merlin and Arthur, collected in the Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth († 1154), passed into French literature, bearing the character which the bishop of St. Asaph had stamped upon them. Chrétien de Troye's Perceval (c. 1175) is doubtless based on an Anglo-Norman poem. Robert de Boron (c. 1215) took the subject of his Merlin (published by G. Paris and J. Ulrich, 1886, 2 vols., Société des Anciens Textes) from Geoffrey of Monmouth. Finally, the most celebrated love-legend of the middle ages, and one of the most beautiful inventions of world-literature, the story of Tristan and Iseult, tempted two authors, Béroul and Thomas, the first of whom is probably, and the second certainly, Anglo-Norman (see ARTHURIAN LEGEND; GRAIL, THE HOLY; TRISTAN). One Folie Tristan was composed in England in the last years of the 12th century. (For all these questions see Soc. des Anc. Textes, Muret's ed. 1903; Bédier's ed. 1902-1905). Less fascinating than the story of Tristan and Iseult, but nevertheless of considerable interest, are the two romans d'aventure of Hugh of Rutland, Ipomedon (published by Kölbing and Koschwitz, Breslau, 1889) and Protesilaus (still unpublished) written about 1185. The first relates the adventures of a knight who married the young duchess of Calabria, niece of King Meleager of Sicily, but was loved by Medea, the king's wife.
The second poem is the sequel to Ipomedon, and deals with the wars and subsequent reconciliation between Ipomedon's sons, Daunus, the elder, lord of Apulia, and Protesilaus, the younger, lord of Calabria. Protesilaus defeats Daunus, who had expelled him from Calabria. He saves his brother's life, is reinvested with the dukedom of Calabria, and, after the death of Daunus, succeeds to Apulia. He subsequently marries Medea, King Meleager's widow, who had helped him to seize Apulia, having transferred her affection for Ipomedon to his younger son (cf. Ward, Cat. of Rom., i. 728). To these two romances by an Anglo-Norman author, Amadas et Idoine, of which we only possess a continental version, is to be added. Gaston Paris has proved indeed that the original was composed in England in the 12th century (An English Miscellany presented to Dr. Furnivall in Honour of his Seventy-fifth Birthday, Oxford, 1901, 386-394). The Anglo-Norman poem on the Life of Richard Coeur de Lion is lost, and an English version only has been preserved.
About 1250 Eustace of Kent introduced into England the roman d'Alexandre in his Roman de toute chevalerie, many passages of which have been imitated in one of the oldest English poems on Alexander, namely, King Alisaunder (P. Meyer, Alexandre le grand, Paris, 1886, ii. 273, and Weber, Metrical Romances, Edinburgh).
English Literature in the Age of Chaucer
Et pour ce il peut comparer au parler des angels du ciel, pour la grand doulceur et biaultée d'icel)," was such that it was not till 1363 that the chancellor opened the parliamentary session with an English speech. And although the Hundred Years' War led to a decline in the study of French and the disappearance of Anglo-Norman literature, the French language continued, through some vicissitudes, to be the classical language of the courts of justice until the 17th century. It is still the language of the Channel Islands, though there too it tends more and more to give way before the advance of English.
It will be seen from the above that the most flourishing period of Anglo-Norman literature was from the beginning of the 12th century to the end of the first quarter of the 13th. The end of this period is generally said to coincide with the loss of the French provinces to Philip Augustus, but literary and political history do not correspond quite so precisely, and the end of the first period would be more accurately denoted by the appearance of the history of William the Marshal in 1225 (published for the Societe de l'histoire de France, by Paul Meyer, 3 vols., 1891-1901). It owes its brilliancy largely to the protection accorded by Henry II. of England to the men of letters of his day. "He could speak French and Latin well, and is said to have known something of every tongue between'the Bay of Biscay and the Jordan.' He was probably the most highly educated sovereign of his day, and amid all his busy active life he never lost his interest in literature and intellectual discussion; his hands were never empty, they always had either a bow or a book" (Dict. of Nat. Biog.). Wace and Benoît de Sainte-More compiled their histories at his bidding, and it was in his reign that Marie de France composed her poems.
An event with which he was closely connected, viz. the murder of Thomas Becket, gave rise to a whole series of writings, some of which are purely Anglo-Norman. In his time appeared the works of Béroul and Thomas respectively, as well as some of the most celebrated of the Anglo-Norman romans d'aventure. It is important to keep this fact in mind when studying the different works which Anglo-Norman literature has left us. We will examine these works briefly, grouping them into narrative, didactic, hagiographic, lyric, satiric and dramatic literature.
Narrative Literature: (a) Epic and Romance. - The French epic came over to England at an early date. We know that the Chanson de Roland was sung at the battle of Hastings, and we possess Anglo-Norman MSS. of a few chansons de geste. The Pèlerinage de Charlemagne (Koschwitz, Altfranzösische Bibliothek, 1883) was, for instance, only preserved in an Anglo-Norman manuscript of the British Museum (now lost), although the author was certainly a Parisian. The oldest manuscript of the Chanson de Roland that we possess is also a manuscript written in England, and amongst the others of less importance we may mention La Chançun de Willame, the MS. of which has (June 1903) been published in facsimile at Chiswick (cf. Paul Meyer, Romania, xxxii. 597-618). Although the diffusion of epic poetry in England did not actually inspire any new chansons de geste, it developed the taste for this class of literature, and the epic style in which the tales of Horn, of Bovon de Hampton, of Guy of Warwick (still unpublished), of Waldef (still unpublished), and of Fulk Fitz Warine are treated, is certainly partly due to this circumstance.
Although the last of these works has come down to us only in a prose version, it contains unmistakable signs of a previous poetic form, and what we possess is really only a rendering into prose similar to the transformations undergone by many of the chansons de geste (cf. L. Brandin, Introduction to Fulk Fitz Warine, London, 1904).
The interinfluence of French and English literature can be studied in the Breton romances and the romans d'aventure even better than in the epic poetry of the period. The Lay of Orpheus is known to us only through an English imitation; the Lai du cor was composed by Robert Biket, an Anglo-Norman poet of the 12th century (Wulff, Lund, 1888). The lais of Marie de France were written in England, and the greater number of the romances composing the matière de Bretagne seem to have passed from England to France through the medium of Anglo-Norman. The legends of Merlin and Arthur, collected in the Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth († 1154), passed into French literature, bearing the character which the bishop of St. Asaph had stamped upon them. Chrétien de Troye's Perceval (c. 1175) is doubtless based on an Anglo-Norman poem. Robert de Boron (c. 1215) took the subject of his Merlin (published by G. Paris and J. Ulrich, 1886, 2 vols., Société des Anciens Textes) from Geoffrey of Monmouth. Finally, the most celebrated love-legend of the middle ages, and one of the most beautiful inventions of world-literature, the story of Tristan and Iseult, tempted two authors, Béroul and Thomas, the first of whom is probably, and the second certainly, Anglo-Norman (see ARTHURIAN LEGEND; GRAIL, THE HOLY; TRISTAN). One Folie Tristan was composed in England in the last years of the 12th century. (For all these questions see Soc. des Anc. Textes, Muret's ed. 1903; Bédier's ed. 1902-1905). Less fascinating than the story of Tristan and Iseult, but nevertheless of considerable interest, are the two romans d'aventure of Hugh of Rutland, Ipomedon (published by Kölbing and Koschwitz, Breslau, 1889) and Protesilaus (still unpublished) written about 1185. The first relates the adventures of a knight who married the young duchess of Calabria, niece of King Meleager of Sicily, but was loved by Medea, the king's wife.
The second poem is the sequel to Ipomedon, and deals with the wars and subsequent reconciliation between Ipomedon's sons, Daunus, the elder, lord of Apulia, and Protesilaus, the younger, lord of Calabria. Protesilaus defeats Daunus, who had expelled him from Calabria. He saves his brother's life, is reinvested with the dukedom of Calabria, and, after the death of Daunus, succeeds to Apulia. He subsequently marries Medea, King Meleager's widow, who had helped him to seize Apulia, having transferred her affection for Ipomedon to his younger son (cf. Ward, Cat. of Rom., i. 728). To these two romances by an Anglo-Norman author, Amadas et Idoine, of which we only possess a continental version, is to be added. Gaston Paris has proved indeed that the original was composed in England in the 12th century (An English Miscellany presented to Dr. Furnivall in Honour of his Seventy-fifth Birthday, Oxford, 1901, 386-394). The Anglo-Norman poem on the Life of Richard Coeur de Lion is lost, and an English version only has been preserved.
About 1250 Eustace of Kent introduced into England the roman d'Alexandre in his Roman de toute chevalerie, many passages of which have been imitated in one of the oldest English poems on Alexander, namely, King Alisaunder (P. Meyer, Alexandre le grand, Paris, 1886, ii. 273, and Weber, Metrical Romances, Edinburgh).
English Literature in the Age of Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
John Chaucer, a vintner and citizen of London, married Agnes, heiress of one Hamo de Copton, the city moneyer, and owned the house in Upper Thames Street, Dowgate Hill (a site covered now by the arrival platform of Cannon Street Station), where his son Geoffrey was born. That his birth was not in 1328, hitherto the accepted date, is fully proved (Furnivall in The Academy, 8 Dec., 1888, 12 Dec., 1887). John Chaucer was connected with the Court, and once saw Flanders in the royal train.Geoffrey was educated well, but whether he was entered at either university remains unknown. He figures by name from the year 1357, presumably in the capacity of a page, in the household books of the Lady Elizabeth de Burgh, wife of Prince Lionel, third son of King Edward III (Bond in Fornightly Review, VI, 28 Aug., 1873). The lad followed this prince to France, serving through the final and futile Edwardian invasion, which ended in the Peace of Bretigny (1360), and was taken prisoner at "Retters", identified by unwary biographers as Retiers near Rennes, but by Skeat as Rethel near Reims, a place mentioned by Froissart in his account of this very campaign. Thence Chaucer was ransomed by the king, who, when the Lady Elizabeth died, took over her page and later (1367) pensioned him for life.
Chaucer was married before 1374; probably the Philippa Chaucer named in the queen's grant of 1366 was then Geoffrey Chaucer's wife (Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, I, 95-7). It seems clear that he could not have been happy in his marriage (Hales in Dict. Nat. Biog., X, 157). He had two sons and a daughter, if not other children. Gascoigne tells us that his contemporary, Thomas Chaucer, was the poet's son. This statement, long discredited, is now fully endorsed by the best authorities (Hales in Athenaeum, 31 March, 1888; Skeat, ibid., 27 Jan.1900). Thomas Chaucer's mother was Philippa Roet, daughter of Sir Paon or Payne de Roet Guienne king at arms. Roet had another daughter, Catherine, widow of Sir Hugh Swynford, who was for Gaunt's mistress and eventually his third wife. Thus Chaucer became the brother-in-law of the great duke, who from 1368 onwards had been his most powerful patron. Thomas Chaucer (b. about 1367; d. 1434), later of Woodstock and Ewelme, became chief butler to four sovereign, as well as Speaker of the House of Commons (in 1414). His sister Elizabeth (b. 1365) at sixteen entered Barking Abbey as a novice, John of Gaunt providing fifty pounds as her religious dowry. Lewis Chaucer, the "litel sonne Lowys", for whom the "Astrolale" was written, is supposed to have died in childhood.
From about his twenty-sixth year Chaucer was frequently employed on important diplomatic missions; the year 1372-3 marks the turning point of his literary life, for then he was sent to Italy; circumstances make it extremely probable that either in Florence or at Padua he made Petrarch's acquaintance (Lounsbury, Studies, I, 67-68). The young King Richard II granted Chaucer a second life pension. It is startling to find him, in 1380, concerned in a discreditable abduction (Athenaeum, 29 Nov., 1873; from the Close Roll of 3 of Richard II). He was made comptroller of the petty customs of the port of London and complains of the burden of official life in "The House of Fame" (lines 652-60); and it would appear from the prologue the "Legend of Good Women", and through the influence of the new queen, Anne of Bohemia, he was enabled by 1385 to secure a permanent deputy. At this time he gave up housekeeping in Aldgate, and settled in the country, presumably at Greenwich, where he had a garden and arbour.
The intrigues of the partisans of the king's uncle, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, involved Chaucer's fortunes in partial ruin. The grants made to Philippa, his wife, ceased in 1387, so that we may suppose she was then dead; during the spring of 1388 Chaucer was obliged to sell two of his pensions; in 1390 he was twice in one day robbed of the king's money, but was excused from repaying it. Until King Richard recovered power Chaucer had lean years to undergo. For a while he was Clerk of the Works at Windsor, Westminster and the Tower, but proved thriftless and unsuccessful in business affairs, and gave little satisfaction. Unrivalled opportunities and the fostering care of successive sovereigns could not keep him from anxiety, if not penury, towards the end. It is noticeable that his latest and most troubled period produced the "Canterbury Tales". Within four days after his accession King Henry IV, the son of Chaucer's first benefactor, increased Chaucer's remaining income by forty marks per annum. The poet then leased a pleasant house in the monastery garden at Westminster, and there, hard by the Lady Chapel of the Abbey (now replaced by the loftier erection of Henry VII), he died.
For a century and a half his only memorial in Westminster Abbey was a Latin epitaph written by Surigonius of Milan, engraved upon a leaden plate, and hung up, probably at Caxton's instigation, on a pillar near the grave. The present canopied grey marble altar-tomb, on the south side, was set up by Nicholas Brigham, in 1556; all trace of its votive portrait of the venerated master disappeared long ago.
The "Canterbury Tales" were first printed by Caxton, from a faulty manuscript, in or about 1476-7; later by Pynson, and by Wynkyn de Worde. Other pieces were collected, and, between 1526-1602, often published with the "Tales". Many of these, attributed to Chaucer even by his earliest great modern editor, Tyrwhitt, are now known not to be his. (Skeat, "Chaucer's Minor Poems", Oxford, 1896; or, Idem "Chaucerian Pieces" in the "Complete Works", Oxford, 1897, suppl. vol.) Chaucer's genuine major poems are assigned to this chronological order: The "Romaunt of the Rose", that is, the first 1705 lines — the remainder being rejected as not Chaucer's (see Chaucer Society Publications, 2nd Series, No 19, 1884) — dates from about 1366, and "The A.B.C.", from the same period; the "Book of the Duchess" from 1369, the "Complaint of Pity" from 1372; "Anelida and False Arcite" from 1372-4; "Troilus and Cressid" from 1379-83, the "Parliament of Fowls" from 1382; the "House of Fame" from 1383-4; the "Legend of Good Women" from about 1385-6; and the "Canterbury Tales" as a whole, from 1386 onwards until after 1390. It is curious that the first draft of the lovely Tales by the Second Nun, the Man of Law, the Clerk, the Knight, and part of the Monk, should have been produced early; and that the Tales by the Miller, the Reeve, the Shipman, and the Merchant, as well as the Wife of Bath's Prologue, should have been produced after 1387. Chaucer's objectionable work is, therefore, not the work of his youth.
To the intense affection, frequently expressed, of Hoccleve, we owe the first and best of Chaucer's portraits, familiar through reproduction. It appears in the margin of "The Governail of Princes", or "De Regimine Principum" (Harl. manuscript 4866, in British Museum). In it we see Chaucer, limned from memory, in his familiar hood and gown, rosary in hand, plump, full-eyed, fork-bearded. (For detailed accounts see Spielman, "The Portraits of Geoffrey Chaucer", London, 1900, first issued in the "Chaucer Memorial Lectures", 111-41.) Like Dryden, he was silent, and had a "down look"; this physical characteristic was partly due to a most genuine modesty, partly to the habit of constant reading.
Chaucer indeed read and annexed everything, and transmuted everything into that vocabulary of his, all plasticity and all power. He is a cosmopolite, chiefly influenced by Ovid, by his own contemporary Italy, a debtor, if ever man was, to the whole spirit of his age; he has its fire, its impudence, its broad licentiousness; he has rather more than his share of its true-hearted pathos, its exquisite freshness and brightness, its sense of eternity. The so-called "Counsel of Chaucer" sums up, at a holy and serene moment, his philosophic outlook. He had unequalled powers of observation, and gave a highly ironic but most humane report. He is an artist through and through, and that artist had been a soldier and a diplomat, hence his genius, even in its extremes of mirth has balance and health, remoteness and neutrality — it is never bitter, and never in the least "viewy". Matthew Arnold (Introduction to Ward's "English Poets" 1885, I, pp. 34-35) accuses him of a lack of what Aristotle calls "high and excellent seriousness". But "high seriousness" is not quite the note of the fourteenth century. Chaucer's is the master-note (submerged all over Europe since the Reformation) of joy.
This brings us to the question of his personal religion.
Foxe (Acts and Monuments of the Church, 1583, II, 839) started the absurd theory that Chaucer was a follower of Wyclif. The poet's own abstract habit; his association with the prince who (probably actuated by no very high motives) withdrew his favour from the contemporary reformer when solicitude for a purer practice ran into heresy and threatened revolt; his close friendship with Strode, a Dominican of Oxford and a strong anti-Lollard — these things tend of themselves to denote Chaucer's views in the matter. The opposite inference is "due to a misconception of his language, based on a misconception of his character" (Lounsbury Studies, II, 469). Like Wyclif, Chaucer loved the priestly ideal; and he draws it incomparably in his "Poor Parson of Town". Yet, as has been said, that very "Parson's Tale", in its extant form, goes far to prove that its author, even by sympathy, was no Wyclifite (A.W. Ward, "Chaucer", London, 1879, p. 134, in "English Men of Letters Series").
Passionless justice was the bed-rock of Chaucer's mind. He paints that parti-coloured Plantagenet world as it was, not interfering to make it better, nor to wish it better. Where the churchman type was gross, he represents it grossly. It is well, however, to recall that the famous episode of his "beating a Friar in Fleet street" is the invention of Speght, further embroidered by Chatterton; and that the prose tractate, "Jack Upland", full of invective against the religious orders, is proved not to be Chaucer's. His attitude towards women is just as two-sided. He shows in many a theme a reverence toward them which must have been fed by that "hy devocioun" to Our Lady which is beautifully apparent in his pages, and which Hoccleve mentions in recalling his memory; but dramatic exigencies, Boccaccio's example, presumable hard domestic experience, a laughingly merciless psychology, and a paralyzing outspokenness, contrive too often, as readers regret, to fight it down.
He has been held up as a rationalist, on the strength of a few passages, and against the enormous mass of testimony which he furnishes on the soundness of his Catholic ethos. Of that, after all, as of its absence, Catholics are the best judges. The "Nuns' Priest's Tale" (Skeat's ed., lines 4424-40) raises the question of predestination, only to drop it. The context shows that the poet thinks his sudden side-issue not trivial or tedious, but quite the contrary, he quits it only because he cannot "boult it to the bren", i.e., sift it down, analyze it satisfactorily. Again, the "Knight's Tale" (Skeat's ed., lines 2890-14) implies that the author has no mind to dogmatize upon the final destiny of poor Arcite, newly slain. Both these instances have been cited in the masterly chapter on "Chaucer as a Literary Artist" (Lounsbury, Studies, II, 512-15, 520), to prove, in the one ease, an easy dismissal of a mere scholastic dilemma; in the other, Chaucer's disbelief, or half-belief, in immortality. They prove, rather, a restraint in dogmatizing about the destiny of the individual, a restraint practiced by the church itself. "The Legend of Good Women" opens with some fifteen lines, the purport of which need never have been questioned. They mean nothing if they do not mean that knowledge by evidence is one thing, assurance by faith another thing; and that lack of sensible proof can never discredit revelation. A somewhat playful confession of belief has here been turned into a serious profession of agnosticism, through sheer lack of spiritual understanding. His "hostility to the Church", as Professor Lounsbury calls it, is certainly not borne out by Chaucer's going out of his way, as he does, to defend her from age-long calumnies; for instance, in the "Franklin's Tale", and in the section "De Ira" of the "Parson's Tale", he witnesses to her horror of superstitions and false sciences. Chaucer, in short, though none too supernatural a person, had a most orthodox grip on his catechism.
The "Preces", or prose "retracciouns", which are usually painted at either end of the "Canterbury Tales" date from the evening of Chaucer's life. To Tyrwhitt, Hales, Ward, and Lounsbury, who suspect undue priestly influence, the "Preces" are, in their own words, "morbid", "reaction and weakness", "a betrayal of his poetic genius", "unbearable to have to accept as genuine". In the course of them, Chaucer disclaims of his books "thilke that sounen in-to sinne" i.e., those which are consonant with, or sympathetic with sin. Skeat is the only editor who understands Chaucer in his contrition (Notes to the "Canterbury Tales", in the Oxford Press complete edition, 475). Gascoigne (Theological Dictionary, Pt. II, 377, the manuscript of which is in the library of Lincoln College, Oxford) unwittingly parodies the situation, and represents the old sinner "Chawserus" as dying while lamenting over pages, quæ male scripsi de malo et turpissimo amore. To the secular point of view it has all seemed, and may well seem, mistaken and deplorable. But nothing is manlier, or more touching and endearing, than this humble self-subordination to conscience and the moral law. "Except ye become as little children" is the hardest saying ever given to the intellectual world. These are great geniuses, Geoffrey Chaucer not least among them, to whom it was not given in vain.
The standard recent editions of Chaucer are: (1) "Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Annotated and Accented, with Illustrations of English Life in Chaucer's Time. New and revised edition, with illustrations from the Ellesmere manuscript" (Saunder's ed., London, 1894); (2) "The Student's Chaucer; being a Complete Edition of his Works" (Skeat ed., Oxford, 1895); (3) "The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, edited from numerous Manuscripts" (Skeat ed. 7 vols., Oxford, 1894-7); (4) "The Canterbury Tales done into Modern English, by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat" (The King's Classics Series, Gollancz ed., 1904).
Geoffrey C (1342/43-1400)
Geoffrey Chaucer (1342/43-1400)
THE ELIZABETHAN AGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
THE literary temper of Elizabethan England was distinguished by a splendid vitality and vivacity, a rare catholicity of taste and width of outlook. Prose and poetry alike rang with a fervid enthusiasm for life in its most varied aspects. The nation's intellect was permeated by a wealth of ideas and aspirations which were new. The powerful individuality of Elizabethan literature is unmistakable, and in the work of Shakespeare it scaled heights unsurpassed in the literature of the world. But Elizabethan literature is misunderstood when it is studied in isolation. Very many of its ideas and aspirations were the common property of civilized Europe, however much they were colored by the national idiosyncrasy. The enthusiasm for the Greek and Latin classics, the passion for extending the limits of human knowledge, the resolve to make the best and not the worst of life upon earth, the ambition to cultivate the idea of beauty, the faith in man's physical, moral, and intellectual perfectibility, the conviction that man's reason was given him to use without restraint, all these sentiments, which went to the making of Elizabethan literature, were the foundation also of the Renaissance literature of Italy, France, and Spain. Elizabethan literature cannot be rightly appreciated unless it be viewed as one of the latest fruits of the great movement of the European Renaissance. The Elizabethan was gifted with an exceptional power of assimilation. He studied and imitated foreign authors with amazing energy. At times the freedom with which the Elizabethans adapted, often without acknowledgment, contemporary poetry of France and Italy seems inconsistent with the dictates of literary honesty. Yet in spite of the eager welcome which was extended to foreign literary forms and topics, in spite of the easy tolerance of plagiarism, the national spirit was strong enough in Elizabethan England to maintain the individuality of its literature in all the broad currents. The fervor of his temperament was peculiar to the Elizabethan, and in most of his utterances his passionate idiosyncrasy fused itself with the varied fruits of his study. Dependence on foreign example, so far from checking the fervid workings of native sentiment, invigorated, fertilised and chastened it. The matter and manner of Elizabethan literature owed an enormous debt to foreign influence, but Elizabethan individuality survived the foreign invasion. English literature in the sixteenth century was slow in proving its true capacity, though in its infancy the finest flower of the Renaissance literature of Italy and France lay at its disposal. In Italy, where of all the countries of western Europe the intellectual movement of the Renaissance matured earliest and flourished longest, the highest levels of literary achievement were reached long before sixteenth century England won any conspicuous literary repute. The Renaissance literature of France was junior to that of Italy, and its career was briefer and less distinguished. But the French Renaissance yielded a rich literary harvest while English Renaissance literature still lacked coherent form or aim. It is in the story of the Renaissance literature of Spain that the course of the Renaissance literature of England finds its closest parallel. The active career of Cervantes (1547-1616) was almost precisely conterminous with that of Shakespeare. In both Spain and England, too, the literary energy of the era devoted itself most earnestly to the same branch of literary effort; the finest literary genius alike of Englishmen and of Spaniards at the close of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century was absorbed in the production of drama. In Spain and in England, alone among civilized nations, the literary Renaissance of the sixteenth century ran its course contemporaneously.
As in Spain, so in England Renaissance literature made some notable reconnoitring skirmishes before it gained the roads which led to decisive victory. Under Italian or French influence Henry VIII's courtiers sought to inaugurate a literary era in England in the first half of the sixteenth century. Blank verse and the sonnet, which were to play a large part in the Elizabethan epoch, were then first introduced from Italy. But the first harbingers of a literary revival in Tudor England proved disappointing heralds. Their utterances were for the most part halting. There was a want of individuality or definiteness in expression. The early Tudor experiments in poetry lacked harmony or complexity of tone. The prose was marked by a simple directness, which was often vigorous, but tended to monotony and tameness. It is even more worthy of remark that the work done by Surrey, Wyatt, Lord Berners, and their contemporaries practically ceased with their deaths. No one for the time being carried it further. The generation that followed the close of Henry VIII's reign was almost destitute of genuine literary effort.
The work of Thomas Sackville
Thomas Sackville (1536-1608) |
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Nor did the Elizabethan period of English literature begin with the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the English throne. Twenty-one years of her reign passed away before any literary works of indisputable eminence came to birth. There were occasional glimmerings of light in the course of the first two decades. Much was attempted which offered invaluable suggestion to later endeavors, but the stream of great literature did not flow continuously or with sustained force until after Edmund Spenser (1552?-99) gave certain proof of his poetic power in his Shepheards Calender in 1579, and Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86) invited his fellow-countrymen in his Apologie for Poetrie to acknowledge the solemn significance of great literature. In the opening years of Queen Elizabeth's reign the most notable literary work came from the pen of Thomas Sackville (1536-1608), at the time a young barrister of three-and-twenty, who in later life devoted himself exclusively to politics. He came to hold the highest offices in the State, obtained the title of Earl of Dorset, and outlived Queen Elizabeth's long reign by five years. Sackville made two interesting contributions to English literature, which bore testimony to a craving for a finer workmanship and wider scope than existed already; but his work stands practically alone. In the first place, he designed a long poem on the vicissitudes of great personages in English history who had reached violent ends. Sackville owed the main suggestion of his plan to Boccaccio, who had worked out a like scheme in Latin prose, while he drew from Dante and Virgil the machinery of a poet's imaginary visit to the regions which the souls of dead heroes inhabited. A Myroure for Magistrates showed, as far as Sackville's contributions to it went, a marked advance in poetic temper on any English poetry that had been produced since Chaucer's death. Sackville wrote only two sections of the long poem, the Induction and the story of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, a victim of Richard III's tyranny. Sackville's poetic aims are perhaps more remarkable than his powers of execution. Some of the stiffness which is inevitable in new methods of poetic exposition is apparent in his phraseology and versification. But his sense of stately rhythm, and his fertile command of poetic imagery, went far beyond the range of any preceding sixteenth century poet in England.
From the historical point of view Sackville's second literary endeavor is perhaps more notable than his first. With another lawyer, Thomas Norton (1532-84), he collaborated in the production of the first regular tragedy in the English tongue, and was thus a herald of the most characteristic feature of Elizabethan literature. A rudimentary form of drama had long been current in England. The medieval miracle plays, which were for the most part oral presentations of biblical stories, had yielded in course of time to moralities, in which personifications of vices and virtues illustrated in action the unending struggles of good and evil for the dominion of man's soul. In the early sixteenth century the moralities had been largely supplanted by interludes, in which homely anecdote or farcical character was scenically portrayed. Of true dramatic art, with its subtlety of characterization and its poetic capabilities, practically nothing was known in England when Elizabeth's reign opened. A crude endeavor by a schoolmaster, in a piece called Ralph Roister Doister, to adapt to English idiosyncrasies Plautus' comedy of Miles Gloriosus can only with many qualifications be allowed to have introduced comedy into England. Later efforts to disseminate a knowledge of classical drama gave Elizabethan drama its first true impetus. The tragedy of Gorboduc, of which Norton wrote the first three acts and Sackville the last two, was the earliest efficient attempt to familiarize the English public with the significance of drama in any artistic sense. Norton and Sackville took the late classical work of Seneca as their model. But they were not slavish imitators. No effort was made to respect the classical unities of time or place, although the action was for the most part narrated by chorus and messenger. The plot is drawn from mythical annals of primeval British history and points a moral of immediate application to contemporary politics, the perils of a nation which is torn by internal dissension. The dramatic feeling is throughout of an elementary type. Small capacity is betrayed of delineating character or of developing plot. The speeches are of monotonous temper and tedious length. But in spite of its manifest imperfections, the tragedy of Gorboduc has two supreme claims to honorable commemoration. It introduced Englishmen, who knew no language but their own, to an artistic conception of tragedy, and it revealed to them the true mode of tragic expression. Like Surrey's translation of the Aeneid, Gorboduc was written in blank verse, and first indicated that this metre, which Sackville and Norton borrowed, like Surrey, direct from its home in Italy, was alone consonant with the dignity of tragedy in the English tongue.
Sackville's efforts stand practically apart in the history of Elizabethan literature. His contributions to A Myroure for Magistrates, were published in 1563. Gorboduc was written and acted in 1561, first printed in 1565. Sackville's literary career went no further; no certain promise of great poetry or prose characterised the work of such authors as were active at the moment when he laid down his pen. The torch that he had lighted found during many years few fitted to bear it after him. The versifiers Barnaby Googe (1540-94) and George Turberville (1540?-1610?) studied the classics and contemporary Italian literature with very small effect. Neither they nor Thomas Churchyard (1520?-1604), who reached a patriarchal age, gained a footing except on the lowest slopes of Parnassus.
Gascoigne's innovations
George Gascoigne (1525?-77) |
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The work of George Gascoigne (1525?-77), which belongs to the same epoch, stands in a different category. The variety of endeavor lends his career historic interest. He sought new inspiration from Italy in directions which no one before had followed. From his pen came both a comedy and a tragedy which were directly adapted from the modern Italian drama. His comedy, The Supposes, is drawn from Ariosto; his tragedy, Jocasta, from Lodovico Dolce. Ariosto's play is in prose, and if Sackville and Norton's tragedy first taught Englishmen the fitness of blank verse for the purposes of tragedy, Gascoigne's English presentation of Ariosto's I Suppositi first taught his countrymen that prose was the fittest vehicle for the purposes of comedy. Gascoigne's tragedy, the second that was written in England, was in blank verse, like both its Italian original and its early English predecessor. It follows the classical model more closely than Gorboduc, for Gascoigne merely translates Dolce, who was himself slavishly adapting the Phoenissae of Euripides. At the same time Gascoigne showed his appreciation of another development of Italian literature. The novel had absorbed much efficient literary energy in Italy. Boccaccio, the earliest master of Italian prose fiction, had in the sixteenth century many disciples, among whom Bandello and Cinthio rivaled their chief in popularity. The vogue of both Bandello and Cinthio was great in England during the latter half of Elizabeth's reign; and Gascoigne inaugurated this fashionable interest in the contemporary Italian novel by translating one of Bandello's popular stories. Nor did this effort exhaust Gascoigne's pioneer labors. He wrote a satire in rhyming verse in emulation of Juvenal and Persius, which was the forerunner of a long line of English poetic satires, and he proved his serious interest in the general development of poetic art in his native country by producing a first critical treatise on poetic workmanship and technique. Gascoigne died in 1577, and two years later Elizabethan literature definitely started on its great career. When the forward movement began, one form of foreign influence seemed likely to obstruct its progress. This obstacle had to be removed before the advancing army could command an open road. In cultured circles the zeal for classical study combined with the want of distinctive artistic quality in contemporary English verse to generate the fallacious belief that English poetry could only improve its quality by servile obedience to classical law or suggestion. The faith was universal that English drama was bound to respect the lines which Athens and Rome had glorified and which Italy and France had reinstated in authority.
So soon as Elizabethan literature was emerging from darkness, a strenuous effort was made to restrain its free development by forcing on it classical fetters, from which there should be no release. Gabriel Harvey (1545 P-1630), a Cambridge tutor, who reckoned Spenser amongst his pupils and had a wide acquaintance among the cultivated nobility, imperiously ordered English poets to confine themselves to Latin metre as well as to Latin ideas. There had recently been developed in France a vernacular literature which deliberately fashioned itself on classical poetry. The comparative success of that movement, whose leaders took the corporate title of La Pléiade, seemed, at a time when the English poetic standard was low, to lend weight to Harvey's pedantic counsel. For a moment it appeared as if Harvey's advice were to prevail. At his instance a literary club was formed in London in 1579 to promote the naturalisation in English poetry of classical prosody.
The classical fallacy
The club, which was called "the Areopagus" and held its meetings at Leicester House, the home of the Earl of Leicester, was formed of men of rank and literary promise who had travelled in France and Italy and had acquired there their literary aspirations. Chief of these was Sir Philip Sidney, a man of great social eminence, in whom were concentrated all the aspirations of the Renaissance: the love of art and letters, the philosophic curiosity, the yearning for novel experience. With Sidney there was associated the more imposing figure of Edmund Spenser, who was Harvey's old pupil and for a time served the Earl of Leicester as secretary. Much energy was spent by these and other eager disciples of Harvey on experiments in English hexameters, elegiacs, and sapphics. For a time both Spenser and Sidney seemed to accept the pedantic argument that accent and rhyme in English poetry were vulgar and ungainly, and that quantity was the only fit characteristic of verse. The clumsiness of the poetic endeavours which illustrated these principles happily proved their ineptitude and error. Spenser quickly acknowledged that poetry could only flourish if it were left free to adapt itself to the idiosyncrasy of a poet's mother-tongue. Sidney, too, as well as Spenser broke away from the toils of the classicists. A breach was essential to the healthy literary development of the country. It came as soon as Elizabethan poetry showed the real capacity of accent and rhyme.
The classical champions were slow to accept defeat. Their own incompetence brought about the ruin of their cause. The English hexameter which they eulogised as the finest vehicle of poetic expression readily lent itself to grotesqueness. Richard Stanyhurst's translation of the Aeneid (1582) into hexameters was deservedly laughed out of court, and its ludicrous clumsiness finally disposed of the claims of the classicists to regulate English literature. Twenty years later Thomas Campion in his Observations on English Poesie (1602) still persisted in denouncing rhyme, but he sufficiently confuted his own argument by the splendid harmonies of his own rhymed lyrics. George Chapman (1559?-1634), a fine classical scholar, spoke the last word on the classical theory with admirable point in one of his earliest poems:
Sweet Poesy
Will not be clad in her supremacy
With those strange garments, Rome's hexameters,
As she is English: but in right prefers
Our native robes, put on with skilful hands
English heroics, to those antic garlands. (Shadow of Night, 11. 86-91.)
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) |
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Spenser, whose muse rejected with some reluctance the trappings of Latin prosody, did more than any other writer to give Elizabethan literature at the outset its fitting cue. His Shepheards Calender, which was published in 1579, was the first great Elizabethan poem which was to stand the test of time. In it the poet offered ample evidence of foreign study. The twelve eclogues which it comprised were framed on foreign models of acknowledged repute. The Greek pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Bion was its foundation, modified by the study of Virgil's Eclogues, and of many French and Italian examples of more recent date. The debt to Marot's French Eclogues was notably large, Spenser was at the same time alive to the literary achievements of his own country. Many times in the course of his poetic career he avowed his discipleship to the greatest of his English literary predecessors, Chaucer. But the value of The Shepheards Calender lies ultimately not in the dexterity of its adaptations, but in the proof it offers of the rich individuality of the poet's genius. The fruits of his reading were fused together and transmuted by his individual force and original genius. The Shepheards Calender shows a rare faculty for the musical modulation of words and the potency of the poet's individual affinities with poetic aspects of nature and human life. It proved how well the new aspirations of the age - the devotion to the Queen and the enthusiasm for the Protestant religion - lent themselves to poetic treatment. Contemporaries at once acknowledged that there had arisen in England one qualified to rank above all preceding English poets, save only Chaucer, who had died nearly two centuries before.
John Lyly (1554-1606) |
Influence of Euphues. Sidney's Arcadia
In the same year as Elizabethan poetry gave sure promise of its great future in The Shepheards Calender, prose also made a notable advance. John Lyly (1554-1606), who was about the same age as Spenser, published the first volume of his moral romance of Euphues soon after The Shepheards Calender; the second and concluding volume followed within a year. It was Lyly's endeavor to weave a moral or educational treatise into a work of fiction. The design showed originality and boldness, if absolute success were scarcely possible. The methods of fostering in "a gentleman or noble person" "virtuous and gentle discipline" barely lend themselves to romance. But the chief interest of Lyly's book lies, not in its subject-matter, but in its style. The author deliberately sought to invest English prose, for the first timein its history, with a distinctive mannerism. His sentences, which are evenly balanced, present an endless series of antitheses, with a slightly epigrammatic flavour. Alliteration is employed with some frequency, and there is a ceaseless flow of similes drawn from natural history. The quaint pedantry of Lyly's method owes a good deal to the affectations of earlier Spanish prose, especially the mannered prose of Guevara. But the English writer adheres to his self-imposed laws of composition with a persistent thoroughness that is unknown to his masters, and gives him substantial claim to the honors of original invention.
Euphues was received with enthusiasm, and stimulated a taste for a subtler and a more characteristic prose style than already existed, as well as for contemplative romance. Few writers achieved at a bound so high a reputation in cultivated society. The ladies of the Court were soon described as Lyly's scholars, and only those who could "parley Euphuism" gained repute for refinement. Lyly's pedantic style lent itself readily to caricature and exaggeration. Contemporary prose soon rang with strained antitheses and grotesque allusions to precious stones, stars, fishes, and plants. But, notwithstanding the absurd extravagance of Lyly and his disciples, he pointed the way to that epigrammatic force of which Bacon in his Essays showed the English language to be capable.
The matter of Lyly's Euphues, despite its confused aim, also exerted a prolific influence on subsequent Elizabethan literature. Elizabethan romance was compounded of many simples, among which were conspicuous the post-classical Greek novel (notably the Aethiopica of Heliodorus), the chivalric stories of the Middle Ages, and the novel and pastoral of Italy. Strongly marked features were derived from such foreign sources as these. Nevertheless, Elizabethan prose fiction readily assimilated Lyly's didacticism in addition.
It was after Lyly's popular work had won public favor that Sir Philip Sidney, when in retirement from the Court, began his great fiction of Arcadia. Although Sidney was familiar with all foreign forms of romance, and directly imitated many of them, the ethical disquisitions which he grafted on his scheme were in Lyly's vein and proved his discipleship to Lyly. The Arcadia was not published till 1590, but it was freely circulated in manuscript seven or eight years previously, and its variety of topic, its wealth of adventurous episode, its poetic interludes, and its ludicrous situations, quickly rendered it, despite its length and frequent incoherence, a formidable rival to Lyly's earlier achievement. But Lyly's narrower scope more easily lent itself to imitation. The short romance, which was a popular literary feature of the decade following the publication of Euphues, drew thence such homebred sustenance as went to its making. The fertile novelists Robert Greene (1560?-92) and his disciple, Thomas Lodge (1558?-1625), were content to announce to the public their chief efforts as sequels or continuations of Lyly's romance. One of Greene's volumes was christened Euphues, his Censure to Philautus, 1587; another was called Menaphon : Camilla's alarum to Slumbering Euphues. Lodge's familiar romance of Rosalynde, on which Shakespeare founded his play of As You Like It, bore the subsidiary title of Euphues' Golden Legacy.
The Puritans and the drama. Sidney's Apologie
The year 1579, which witnessed the emergence of Elizabethan poetry in Spenser's Shepheards Calender and of Elizabethan prose in Lyly's Euphues, gave one other somewhat equivocal hint of the coming greatness. English drama had not passed the limits set by the efforts of Sackville and Norton and Gascoigne. The drama was making no artistic progress in England. Servile adaptations of classical tragedy, which Sackville's and Gascoigne's experiments initiated, seemed destined to encourage bombastic presentment of crime without poetic elevation. Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister, commonly called the earliest English comedy, had had a successor in 1560 in an even cruder farce called Gammer Gurton's Needle, the work of a Cambridge graduate who is now identified as one William Stevenson of Christ's College. Gascoigne had gone to Italy for a comedy of a more regular and ambitious type, but it had not attracted popular taste. The horse-play, rusticity, and burlesque of the native interlude could alone command unquestioned popularity. But signs were apparent before 1579 that the Elizabethan public was developing an interest in dramatic performances, which gave some hope of improved taste in the future. The actor's profession was in course of organization under the patronage of the nobility and in 1576 a building in London was erected for the first time for the purposes of theatrical representations. A second theatre was opened in the following year. From a literary point of view this dramatic activity merited small attention, but evidence of an increased popularity of the infant drama could not be overlooked by any Londoner.
A section of the public saw in the primary principles of the drama a menace to public morals. Puritans identified theatres with paganism, and declared them to be intolerable in a Christian community. A bitter attack from the religious and ethical point of view quickly developed. In 1579 Stephen Gosson, one of the fanatical foes of the budding drama, published a virulent denunciation of plays, players, and dramatists; and he sought to give added weight to his onslaught by dedicating his work without permission to Sir Philip Sidney, who at the moment held a prominent place in fashionable and literary society. Sidney resented Gosson's sour invective. His knowledge of the classics taught him to regard the drama as an honoured branch of literature. By way of dissociating himself from Gosson's opinions he penned a reply to his jaundiced criticism, which gave a notable impetus to the liberal progress of contemporary literature.
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) |
the works of man. In detail his treatise is open to censure. Reverence for the classical laws of dramatic composition shackled his judgment. He anathematised tragi-comedy and defended the classical unities. Nor did he foresee the greatness of the coming Elizabethan drama. On the other hand, he fully acknowledged the grandeur of Spenser's youthful genius, and made a stirring appeal to his countrymen to uplift themselves and look "into the sky of poetry". His work was published in 1580, and his exalted enthusiasm seems to lend him the voice of a herald summoning to the poetic lists the mighty combatants with whom the Elizabethan era was yet to be identified.
The implied challenge met with a notable response. During the decade 1580-90 there were new outbursts of activity in every direction. Both comedy and tragedy assumed for the first time in England a distinctive literary garb. Prose acquired dignity and ease. The sonnet and other forms of lyric poetry reached a new level of fervor, and the last year of the decade was glorified by the publication of the first instalment of Spenser's Faerie Queene.
Spenser's great poem would have rendered the epoch memorable, had it stood alone. It was admirably representative of contemporary ideals in life and literature. The poet, while frankly acknowledging indebtedness to Homer, Virgil, Ariosto and Tasso, professes to present a gigantic panorama of the moral dangers and difficulties that beset human existence. But the allegorical design was not carried out with rigor. The adventures in which Spenser's heroes engage are often drawn from chivalric or epic romance, and are developed with a freedom which ignores the allegorical intention. Spenser, too, was a close observer of the leading events and personages of Elizabethan history, and he wove into the web of his poetry personal impressions of contemporary personages and movements. Hardly anywhere else in Elizabethan poetry does the fervid loyalty of the Elizabethan to the Queen find more expansive utterance. But it is by its poetic style and spirit that the Faerie Queene, as a whole, must be judged. It is the fertility of the poet's imagination, the luxuriance of the poetical imagery, and the exceptional command of the music of words, which give the poem its true title to honour. The poetic fervour of the age, with its metrical dexterity and exuberant style of expression, reached its zenith in Spenser's great work, which proved a potent stimulus not only to poets of his own day but to a long array of their successors.
To Lyly, the author of Euphues, the marked development of comedy which characterised the decade after 1580 was chiefly due. Nearly all his nine comedies were written and produced between 1581 and 1593. With one exception they are in prose, though all are interspersed with simply worded songs which ring with easy harmonies. The form that comedy assumed in Lyly's hand seems mainly of the author's invention. Dramatic force is not a predominating feature. The_characters are mainly drawn from classical mythology : the plot is slender; there is little attempt at characterisation. Lyly's comedies are remarkable for the literary temper of the dialogue. The fantastic conceit, the clever word-play, the graceful similes, create an air of educated refinement which was new to dramatic composition in England. His example had far-reaching consequences. The witty encounters in verbal fence which distinguish many of Shakespeare's comedies bear the impress of Lyly's manner; and, although Lyly as a writer for the stage toys with life rather than interprets it, he revolutionised the native conception of comedy by investing its language with a literary charm.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) |
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While Lyly was creating an artistic tradition in realms of comedy, an even more impressive service was rendered to tragedy by another writer of greater poetic genius. Born only two months before Shakespeare, and dying before he had completed his thirtieth year, Christopher Marlowe (1564-93), the first English tragic poet, began and ended his literary work while Shakespeare was still in his novitiate. His earliest tragedy, Tamburlaine, probably produced in 1588, first indicated the possibilities of Elizabethan tragedy. It was quickly followed by three other tragedies, Dr Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II. Other dramatic work came from Marlowe's pen, but it is to these four tragedies that he owes his commanding place in Elizabethan literature. In the prologue to his first piece, Tamburlaine, he announced his resolve to employ in tragedy "high astounding terms". He scornfully denounced "the jigging veins of rhyming mother wits" whose pens had previously been devoted to tragedy. Not that Marlowe wholly cut himself adrift from the native dramatic tradition. He did not altogether reject even the machinery of the miracle play. In his Faustus good and evil angels and the Seven Deadly Sins are among the dramatis personae, and Hell is pictured on the stage with "damned souls tossing on burning forks". Many of his heroes bear, too, a specious resemblance to the leading characters in the old moralities. They are for the most part personified vices or ruling passions, and are far removed from ordinary humanity. At the same time classical literature left a deep impression on his work. Early in life he had rendered into fervid English verse a part of Musaeus' Greek poem Hero and Leander, as well as Ovid's elegies and the first book of Lucan's Pharsalia. His drama abounds in classical allusions; he assimilated much of the spirit of classical literature; at times, as in Faustus' address to Helen, he seems to emulate the beautiful simplicity of Greek poetry. But, in spite of his wide literary studies and sympathies, Marlowe was essentially a rebel against precedent. His conception of tragedy passed beyond the bounds of authority. His central aim was to portray men in tragical pursuit of unattainable ideals. Tamburlaine is ambitious of universal conquest. Barabas is avaricious of universal wealth. Faustus yearns for omniscience. In developing such ambitions in drama Marlowe often wanders into wild extravagances. But the Titanic force of his presentment of human aspiration is inextinguishable. Many qualities which are requisite to perfect drama were beyond the range of Marlowe's genius. There is practically no feminine interest in his plays; he is destitute of humour; a strain of rant is audible in his flights of eloquence. Nevertheless, the blank verse, which his example finally consecrated to tragic uses, has for the most part a poetic dignity, even a suppleness, of which no earlier writer had given any sign. Ben Jonson justly panegyrised his "mighty line". His latest tragedy of Edward II is cast in a far more artistic mould than its predecessors. The unqualified terror which Tamburlaine, Faustus, and The Jew of Malta excite is there conquered by a subtle pity. The monumental labours of Holinshed, following the earlier and slighter efforts of Hall, had lately made the political annals of the country generally accessible, and the patriotic enthusiasm encouraged poets and dramatists to seek material there. The practice of dramatising English history was not inaugurated by Marlowe, but he was the first to invest with tragic sentiment historic episode. The increased mastery of his art which is apparent in Edward II renders Marlowe's death before he reached his prime one of the most regrettable incidents in literary history. But the work he lived long enough to accomplish bore golden fruit. It was as Marlowe's disciple that Shakespeare first gave proof of his unsurpassed genius for tragedy.
The tragedy of blood
On lesser men than Shakespeare Marlowe's influence was conspicuous and immediate. Writers like George Peele (1558?-97?) and Robert Greene (1560?-92), who had already made some experiments in drama, seem to have hastily revised their effort in the light of Marlowe's example. Greene's Friar Bungay and Friar Bacon reflects something of the motive of Dr Faustus, though the two plays are worked out on different lines. Greene could not rise to Marlowe's sombre intensity, and the buffoonery of the old moralities corrupted his notions of stagecraft. Peele, like Marlowe, went to English history for a tragic plot. Peele's tragedy of Edward I, which was in all likelihood the offspring of Marlowe's Edward II, is unrelieved by artistic subtlety and defaced by political bias. The grandeur of Marlowe's style was difficult of approach, and, save Shakespeare, almost all who sought to emulate it, merely succeeded in echoing the bombast and crude rant with which Marlowe's work was mingled. Elizabethan audiences saw no defect in the sanguinary extravagances of Tamburlaine or The Jew of Malta, and many writers deliberately set themselves to better Marlowe's instruction in developing scenes of bloodshed and violence.
Thomas Kyd (1558-1594) The Life The Works Essays and Articles |
Of these the chief was Thomas Kyd (1557?-95?), whose popular tragedies of horror, The Spanish Tragedy, and Jeronimo, emulated Marlowe's least admirable characteristics. Kyd clothed revolting incident in what a contemporary critic called "the swelling bombast of bragging blank verse", and his strident notes for a moment dominated public taste. But his triumph was short-lived. He was battling with the stream of progress, and suffered the inevitable penalty of neglect even before he died. The new artistic spirit of tragedy which Marlowe's best work inaugurated was not to be repressed.
It was in the last thirteen years of Queen Elizabeth's reign, 1590-1603, that Elizabethan literature shone in its full glory. In 1596 Spenser published the last completed books of his Faerie Queene, and his reputation was finally established. In all directions literary activity redoubled.
Elizabethan lyrics and sonnets
Never before or since was the country so prolific in lyric and sonnet. Foreign influences are here especially apparent. French and Italian poetry was pillaged for ideas and phraseology. But there was a simplicity and sweetness of melody in the best of the short Elizabethan poems, even where the ideas and phraseology came from a foreign source, which must be assigned to native genius. The poetic spirit was widely distributed.
Writers like Thomas Nash (1567-1601) or Thomas Dekker (1570P-1641?), who applied most of their energy to prose, showed in rare outbursts of verse genuine lyric intensity. The habit of writing lyrics spread high and low through all ranks of society; and the success of the amateurs rivalled that of professional writers. Politicians and men of action like the Earls of Essex and Oxford and Sir Walter Ralegh (1552-1618) could occasionally turn as harmonious a lyric stanza as any of the young poets who devoted themselves to literature exclusively. The subject-matter of the Elizabethan lyric is mainly limited to amorous emotion, but there is an occasional tendency to reflexion on sterner topics. Indeed one of the most voluble and honey-tongued of Elizabethan poets, Samuel Daniel (1562-1619), developed a reflective faculty in verse which gives him some claim to rank with Wordsworth. How widely extended was the taste for lyrical utterance may be gauged by the ample miscellanies of brief poems which repeatedly came from the printing-press at the end of the period. All conditions of men figured among the contributors. At least two of these collections, England's Helicon, 1600, and Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, 1602, provide banquets of lyrical masterpieces.
The sonnet, the most difficult of all poetic forms in which to attain excellence, proved a more perilous attraction to poetic aspirants than the lyric. Sonnet-sequences of love, such as Sidney inaugurated in England in his Astrophel and Steall, and Thomas Watson developed in his EKA-TOMATHIA (1582), and in his Tears of Fancie (1593), engaged an army of pens during the last decade of Elizabeth's reign. Few of the great poets of the day escaped the sonneteering contagion. Daniel and Drayton, Lodge and Constable, helped to swell the sonneteering chorus. Spenser and Shakespeare were drawn into the current and paid ample homage to the fashionable vogue. Like Sidney and Watson, the later Elizabethan sonneteers followed with fidelity foreign models, and most of them treated the sonnet as a literary exercise rather than a vehicle for the expression of personal feeling. The work of Petrarch and Tasso among Italians, of Ronsard and Desportes among Frenchmen, was the begetter of fully two-thirds of the quatorzains which saw the light in Elizabethan England. Spenser's long sonnet-sequence which he called Amoretti owed much to French and Italian poetry, and very sparse fragments of it bear adequate testimony to his great capacity. Among the Elizabethan examples only Shakespeare's Sonnets maintain for any space exalted levels of lyric melody or meditative energy. Like other Elizabethan sonnets, they owe a large debt to the vast sonneteering literature of sixteenth century Europe ; but their supreme poetic quality sets on that literature a glorious crown.
The development of prose
The close of the Queen's reign also witnessed a wonderful expansion of the scope of prose literature. The literary fervour which distinguished the poetry of the epoch infected Elizabethan prose. Whatever the subject to which the writer applied himself, whether theology or fiction, or social life or travel, an almost lyrical exuberance of expression manifested itself. The Elizabethan translation of the Bible, The Bishops' Bible, which had been published in 1568, was constantly reprinted until it was superseded by the Authorised Version of 1611, contributed to this effect, but the warmth of feeling reflected the enthusiastic spirit of the age. The most dignified contribution of the era to prose literature was made by the theologian Richard Hooker (1554-1600); although his style is largely based on Latin models and is often stiff and cumbrous, it rarely lacks an harmonious rhythm, and often reaches heights of poetic eloquence.
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Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was beginning his literary career when Hooker was laying down his pen. His great philosophical work was done largely in Latin prose, but whenever he essayed English prose he notably illustrated the adaptability of the language to the highest purposes of exposition. Bacon's English writing owes much to his facility in Latin composition; but it is impregnated by a native gift of imaginative eloquence. In his Advancement of Learning, his chief philosophical work in English, his vocabulary is exceptionally large, and his sentences ring with melody. Pithiness and terseness were rare characteristics of Elizabethan prose. But Bacon in his Essays proved his versatility by making an experiment in aphoristic style, which achieved triumphant success. His subtle reflexions on human nature are largely founded on Machiavelli's practical interpretation of life, and owe something also to Montaigne. But the place of Bacon's Essays in English literature is due to the stimulating and pointed brevity of his language.
In the lower ranks of literary endeavor prose also filled a large space. Pamphleteers abounded and supplied something of the place held by the modern journalist. Thomas Nash (1567-1601) was the most original personality among occasional writers in prose. He was a professional controversialist, and no subject that could be turned to polemical uses was foreign to his pen. He satirised contemporary society and all whom he believed to be impostors with effusive vigour and frankness. Though he expressed unmeasured scorn of the current practice of imitating foreign masters, the luxuriant bluster of Rabelais and Aretino strongly appealed to him. He was addicted, as he confessed, to a swelling and boisterous mode of speech, which at times descended to burlesque effects. But in spite of his reckless gasconading the literary spirit was always strong in him; and in his prose romance of Jack Wilton he produced a novel of adventure, the first of its kind in English, which has lasting literary value. Dekker subsequently carried on a part of Nash's work in quieter tones. His numerous tracts, describing the darker side of London life, are clothed in an untamable volubility. But his prose is thoroughly Elizabethan in the glow of humorous insight and vivacity with which it is illumined.
Shakespeare's career
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) |
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More impressive than any other feature of the literary history of the closing years of Elizabeth's reign was the rise to fame and fortune of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), and the final elevation of the drama to the first place in the literature of the age. The general trend of Shakespeare's career was not unlike those of many contemporaries who followed the dramatic profession. The son of a village tradesman, he received the ordinary education in Latin which was available to all boys of the lower and middle classes in the grammar-school of Stratford-on-Avon, his native place. After vain endeavours to gain a livelihood in the country, he made his way to London soon after he came of age, and opened in a very humble capacity a life-long association with the theatre. There is little doubt that at the outset he thought to win distinction as an actor. But his literary instinct quickly diverted him to the writing of plays.
His period of probation was not short. He did not leap at a bound to fame and fortune. It was probably not till 1591, when he was twenty-seven years of age, and had already spent six years in London, that his earliest original play, Love's Labour's Lost, was performed. It showed the hand of a beginner; it abounded in trivial witticisms. But above all there shone out the dramatic and poetic fire, the humorous outlook on life, the insight into human feeling which were to inspire titanic achievements in the future. Soon afterwards, he scaled the tragic heights of Romeo and Juliet, and he was rightly hailed as the prophet of a new world of art. Thenceforth, he marched onward in triumph.
Shakespeare's work was exceptionally progressive in quality, few authors advanced in their art more steadily. His hand grew firmer, his thought grew richer as his years increased; and, apart from external evidence as to the date of production of his plays, the discerning critic can determine from the versification, and from the general handling of the theme, to what period in his life each composition belongs. The comedies of Shakespeare's younger days often trench upon the domains of farce; those of his middle and later life approach the domain of tragedy. Tragedy in his hands markedly grew, as his years advanced, in subtlety and intensity. His tragic themes became more and more complex, and betrayed deeper and deeper knowledge of the workings of human passion. Finally, the storm and stress of tragedy yielded to the placid pathos of romance. All the evidence shows that, when his years of probation ended, he mastered in steady though rapid succession every degree and phase of excellence in the sphere of drama, from the phantasy of A Midsummer-Night's Dream to the unmatchable humour of Falstaff, from the passionate tragedies of King Lear and Othello to the romantic pathos of Cymbeline and The Tempest.
Shakespeare was no conscious innovator. The topics to which he applied himself were rarely quite new. The chronicle play, which dramatised episodes of English history, had already engaged other pens.
He based his comedies on popular Italian novels, most of which had furnished material for plays, not merely in England, but in Italy and France, before he took up his pen. His Roman tragedies all dealt with well-tried themes. But in the result his endeavours bore little resemblance to those of his contemporaries. The magic of his genius transmuted all he touched. His wealth of thought and his supreme command of language invested all his efforts with an originality and freshness which no contemporary approached.
The amount of work which Shakespeare accomplished in the twenty years of his active professional career (1591-1611) amply proves his steadiness of application and the regularity with which he pursued his vocation. His energy brought him rich pecuniary rewards. Returning to his native place as soon as his financial position was secure, he purchased there the chief house in the town, New Place, and obtained other lands and houses. No mystery attaches to Shakespeare's financial competency. It is easily traceable to his professional earnings as author, actor, and theatrical shareholder, and to his shrewd handling of his revenues. His ultimate financial position differs little from that of his fellow theatrical managers and actors.
Shakespeare died at Stratford on Tuesday, April 23, 1616, probably on his fifty-second birthday. The epitaph on his monument in the chancel of Stratford-on-Avon Church bears convincing testimony to the reputation he acquired in his own day. "With his death," it is there stated, "quick Nature died." All contemporary art was declared to stand in the relation of a page-boy or menial towards his masterly achievements. The supremacy which was frankly allowed him in his own day has been amply vindicated by modern criticism.
Many attempted to wield Shakespeare's bow after his death, but none succeeded. The history of the post-Shakespearean drama of James I's and Charles I's reigns is a tale of degeneracy and decadence. A bountiful endowment with the poetic spirit of the age, an occasional flash of rare dramatic insight, an improved trick of stagecraft, were poor substitutes for Shakespeare's magical intuition, for his sustained command of dramatic expression, for what Coleridge calls his "omnipresent creativeness." In his lifetime the ranks of the dramatists were greatly widened, and numerous younger contemporaries of his energetically pursued the profession of dramatist when he was laid in his grave. But, compared with Shakespeare, even the most accomplished Elizabethan dramatists are dwarfed saplings in the presence of a giant oak.
Post-Shakespearean drama
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Of the younger generation of Shakespeare's contemporaries, Ben Jonson (1573-1637) was the first to enter the dramatic arena, which he was one of the last to quit. Of strongly conservative temper, Jonson deliberately sought to stem the tide of the Shakespearean canons, which freely defied the old dramatic unities and declined to recognise any artificial restriction on the presentment of living experience on the stage. On such principles Jonson declared open war. Comedy, as in the Greek and Latin theatres, was in Jonson's hands a satiric weapon. Plot or story counted for little; men's humours or foibles, which served the purposes of satire, dominated Jonson's efforts in comic drama. Every Man in his Humour, which was probably his earliest extant piece, as it was first acted in 1598, bore witness to his satiric force. His masterpieces in comedy, Volpone and The Alchemist, betrayed a fiery scorn of villainy and hypocrisy; the scenes and characters abounded, too, in strokes of effective humour. But Jonson's respect for the old comic tradition prevented him from abandoning himself freely to the varied dramatic impulses of the epoch. His Roman tragedies, Sejanus (1603) and Catiline (1611), despite the stateliness of the verse, more conspicuously sacrifice life to learning. The dramatic movement halts. With the versatility characteristic of the age Jonson at the same time exercised lyric gifts of a quality that places him in the first rank of Elizabethan poets. For intellectual vigor he may be placed above all his contemporaries save Shakespeare; but the development of English drama owed little or nothing to him. George Chapman (1559-1634), the translator of Homer, worked as a playwright somewhat in Jonson's groove, but he showed less vivacity or knowledge of life. Chapman's tragedies are obtrusively the fruits of studious research. He is by natural affinity a gnomic poet or philosopher who inclines to cryptic utterance. His plays often resemble a series of dignified and weighty soliloquies, in which the dramatist personally addresses himself to the audience in a succession of transparent disguises.
At least eight other able playwrights of Jonson's generation sought, on the other hand, to continue the Shakespearean tradition, and they at times echoed, albeit hesitatingly, their master's wondrous powers of speech. They were all faithful followers of the common contemporary practice of collaboration, and it is not always easy to disentangle one man's contribution to a single play from another's.
John Marston (1575-1634), who began his career as a satirist, was in comedy a shrewd and cynical observer of human life, while as a tragic writer he could occasionally control the springs of pity and terror. Thomas Dekker (1570-1641?) for the most part brought on the stage the society of his own time. He was far more realistic than most of his fellows, and a more truthful portrayer of character. His sentiment was more sincere. But he had smaller faculty of imagination. His language, if simpler, was less glowing or stimulating. Thomas Heywood (d. 1650?) and Thomas Middleton (1570-1627) energetically competed with Dekker and Marston for public favor. Each, in one work, at least Heywood in his Woman Killed With Kindness, and Middleton notably in his Changeling, proved that he cherished a great conception of dramatic art. Heywood excelled Dekker in dramatic handling of domestic episode. Middleton sought to turn to dramatic account picturesque romance. But even the masterpieces of these two writers are defaced by carelessness in construction, and the rest of their work rarely rises above the level of fluent mediocrity. None of these dramatists, save perhaps Heywood, achieved marked success in the theatre. Only John Fletcher (1579-1625), and Philip Massinger (1583-1640), inherited in permanence any substantial share of Shakespeare's popularity. Shakespeare's place at the head of the dramatic profession was filled on his retirement by Fletcher, who made his earliest reputation as a writer of plays in a short-lived partnership with Francis Beaumont (1607-11). Beaumont's career closed before that of Shakespeare, and Fletcher continued his work either alone or with other collaborators, of whom the most constant was Massinger. Fletcher's alliance with Beaumont produced rich fruit in The Maid's Tragedy, and in the tragi-comedy of Philaster (c. 1611), to both of which Beaumont was the larger contributor. Fletcher was better fitted to excel in comedy than in tragedy, and it is his brilliant dialogue and sprightly repartee that mainly gave his dramatic work distinction. His tragic endeavors revealed splendid powers of declamation, but wanted sustained intensity of feeling. Massinger shared many of Fletcher's characteristics, but excelled him in his appreciation of stage requirements, and at times intensified the passing interest of his work by making his plots or characters reflect episodes of current political history. The merits of Fletcher's and Massinger's labours are, however, those of a declining epoch. They show intellectual agility rather than intellectual fertility. Their picturesque utterance inclines to over-elaboration, and there is a steadily growing tendency to mannerism and artifice. Moreover their moral tone is enfeebled. Although Shakespeare is invariably frank and outspoken on moral questions, the moral atmosphere of his work is throughout manly and bracing. Fletcher and Massinger play havoc with the accepted laws of morality, and present vice in all manner of insidious disguises.
Another contemporary dramatist of unquestioned eminence, John Webster (1580-1625) gave similar proofs of decadence. Webster concentrated his abundant energies on repulsive themes : his plots centre in fantastic crimes, which lie out of the range of art and life. But Webster, of all Shakespeare's successors, approached him nearest in tragic intensity.
The last flickers of light which can be traced to the Elizabethan dramatic spirit are visible in the tragic genius of John Ford (d. 1639) and in the miscellaneous ability of James Shirley (1596-1666). Ford's tragic romance of the Broken Heart was produced in 1633. It more closely accords with the classical canons of construction than with the Shakespearean, but the high poetic strain echoes the deep harmonies of Shakespearean tragedy. The name of James Shirley, who died in 1666 from fright and exposure during the Great Fire of London, closes that chapter in the history of the English drama which opened with Marlowe. Though much of Shirley's work is lost, a great mass of plays from his pen survives. His comedies, tragedies, and tragicomedies are shadows of the drama that went before them. But, however faint is the reflexion, Shirley kept the genuine tradition alive till the theatres were forcibly closed at the opening of the civil wars. The Elizabethan age of English literature was one of such exuberant energy that only by slow degrees could the impetus exhaust itself. For a short space the highest intellectual and artistic ambitions of the English people had consciously or unconsciously concentrated themselves on literature. Before the second decade of the seventeenth century closed other interests supervened; questions of supreme political moment distracted and finally absorbed the nation's attention. But the spirit of the Elizabethan era had then done its work. It had given birth to a mass of poetry and prose which ranks in literary merit with the products of the greatest literary epochs in the world's history. Above all, it produced Shakespeare, whom the unanimous verdict of all civilised peoples pronounces to be the greatest of dramatic poets. THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH DRAMA
During the Middle Ages learning was largely confined to the clergy, kings and nobles being frequently unable to read and write. Since the Church service was conducted in Latin, it was unintelligible to the vast majority of communicants. Consequently, as early as the fifth century, perhaps earlier, the clergy conceived of presenting tableaux to elucidate the service and to place biblical stories before their ignorant congregations.The Church ritual was full of dramatic possibilities and a vested choir and robed clergy were ready at hand. There was the blending of symbolic action, Scriptural narrative, outbursts of song. The biblical stories lent themselves easily to presentation.
At first groups of clerics merely presented tableaux—living pictures—to depict to the eye what was being expressed in an unknown tongue to the ear. By the tenth century dialogue was chanted by the choir. Action and gesture emphasized meaning.
Biblical narrative thus treated gave rise to what are known as liturgical plays.
English drama, like the Greek, had its beginnings in
religion. It included simple movement, costuming, and appropriate gestures. By 1200, liturgical drama grew in length and complexity. The Church became too limited to accommodate the crowds that were attracted by these plays. The space surrounding it was used next, but the excited spectators accidentally despoiled graves while crowding around to watch. Then street corners were appropriated, and the farther away the plays got from the Church, the control of the priests lessened. Other people wanted to become involved. In the secularization, considerable humor and levity crept into the plays (e.g., poking fun at Herod, Pilate, Judas, Noah).
Mystery and Miracle Plays
Mystery plays dramatized biblical text. (They were usually held during summer festivals with both civic and religious value.)Miracle plays dramatized the lives of the saints.
1210: Pope Innocent III banned drama from the Church, and by the 14th century the Church had removed drama from Church lands altogether (the inevitable rabble, drunks, and the like were unacceptable under Church auspices, as was the changing content of the plays).
Guilds undertook the drama, which had become so popular that it couldn't be squelched. Pageant wagons moved the tableau through the town, dramatizing biblical text.
Extant cycles of Mystery plays:N-Town (43 plays), York (48 plays), Chester, Wakefield CTowneleyl (32 plays)
There may have been 20 cycles at one time.
Morality Plays
Morality plays were dramatized sermons. The theme was always the same the fall and redemption of mankind. As people grew tired of the same lengthy religious cycles, a need developed for a different type of entertainment. Thus, it carne about that instead of treating the Bible or humanity as a whole, someone began to consider just one example: everyman, anyman, an abstract man.
These plays developed great flexibility in staging. lays Since life is a continual strife between good and evil, the plays came to depict that strife. They showed that man has choice. By making plain the result of wrong choosing, moral lessons could be brought more forcefully home than they could in normal sermons. Thus, the morality concerns itself with Christian conduct.
The one important step in dramatic development which the morality plays manifest is plot.
The oldest surviving morality is The Castle of Perseverance; the best known is Everyman.
The plays are allegorical, and present abstract personifications. As we said, they focus on the contest of Vice and Virtue for the human soul.
The Castle of Perseverance (ca. 1425)
(Required 22 actors)
I. Bad Angel secures the soul of Man in a struggle with Good Angel. The World gives as guides to Man: Pleasure, Folly, Backbiter, and the Seven Deadly Sins. The Good Angel appeals to Confession, Shrift, and Penitence, who lodge Man in the Castle of Perseverance.
II. The forces of Hell can't overwhelm the Castle, which is guarded by the forces of Heaven, but aging Man is enticed outside by Avarice; Death strikes Man down, but he dies repentant.
III. The Four Daughters of God (Mercy, Peace, Truth, and Righteousness) debate the disposal of Man's soul, with Mercy triumphant.
THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE
In addition to the religious mystery plays on pageant wagons and on circular stages resembling modern "theatres in the round," dramatic entertainments were performed in the great halls of royal and noble houses. Plays were also offered by traveling bands of actors on portable stages set up at fairs and other crowd-gathering occasions. In the sixteenth century, enclosed innyards were also used.The first permanent theatre in England was located in Middlesex, just outside the walls of London. The Theatre, as it was called, was created by James Burbage, father of Richard Burbage, the famous actor. There is little direct information about the appearance of The Theatre. It was dismantled in 1598 and its timbers were carried to Bankside, south of London across the Thames River. When it was reassembled in 1599 it was called The Globe. What is known about The Globe probably applies to The Theatre as well.
The age of Shakespeare—and of Marlowe, Kyd, Chapman, Ben Jonson and a host of other dramatists—extends roughly from 1590 to 1625. During this period London probably had more theatre space in ratio to its population than at any other time. Excluding informal theatre spaces such as the great halls of the nobility and such organizations as the Inns of Court (where England's lawyers were trained), there were seven open-air theatres and four indoor theatres. The open-air theatres could accommodate audiences of 2000 to 3000 spectators. The indoor theatres were much smaller and could accommodate 300 to 400 spectators.
The outdoor theatres relied on natural light. They used few stage props and no stage sets in the modern sense of the-term. These seeming limitations encouraged several of the most brilliant features of Elizabethan drama. The lack of stage sets allowed the dramatists to create rapid, extremely fluid actions. Scenes succeeded each other without interruption, somewhat in the manner of twentieth-century movies. The lack of stage sets forced the Elizabethan dramatists to create what might be called a theatre of imagination. Since the scenes were not presented visually, they had to be evoked by poetic language. When we speak today of Shakespeare's magnificent poetry, we are referring to an element of his dramas that resulted from this absence of scenery.
The Elizabethan stage was a thrust stage surrounded on three (perhaps on all four) sides by the audience. There was continuous contact between the actors and the spectators. Taking advantage of this, Shakespeare and his contemporaries filled their plays with asides, anachronisms, topical allusions and other devices that allowed the actor to speak directly to the audience. The most brilliant of these devices is the Shakespearean soliloquy, but a careful reader will find innumerable other examples throughout the plays. The glories of Shakespeare's drama are thus directly related to the characteristics on which they were originally presented.The Augustan Age
The eighteenth century in English literature has been called the Augustan Age, the Neoclassical Age, and the Age of Reason. The term 'the Augustan Age' comes from the self-conscious imitation of the original Augustan writers, Virgil and Horace, by many of the writers of the period. Specifically, the Augustan Age was the period after the Restoration era to the death of Alexander Pope (~1690 - 1744). The major writers of the age were Pope and John Dryden in poetry, and Jonathan Swift and Joseph Addison in prose. Dryden forms the link between Restoration and Augustan literature; although he wrote ribald comedies in the Restoration vein, his verse satires were highly admired by the generation of poets who followed him, and his writings on literature were very much in a neoclassical spirit. But more than any other it is the name of Alexander Pope which is associated with the epoch known as the Augustan Age, despite the fact that other writers such as Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe had a more lasting influence. This is partly a result of the politics of naming inherent in literary history: many of the early forms of prose narrative common at this time did not fit into a literary era which defined itself as neoclassic. The literature of this period which conformed to Pope's aesthetic principles (and could thus qualify as being 'Augustan') is distinguished by its striving for harmony and precision, its urbanity, and its imitation of classical models such as Homer, Cicero, Virgil, and Horace, for example in the work of the minor poet Matthew Prior. In verse, the tight heroic couplet was common, and in prose essay and satire were the predominant forms. Any facile definition of this period would be misleading, however; as important as it was, the neoclassicist impulse was only one strain in the literature of the first half of the eighteenth century. But its representatives were the defining voices in literary circles, and as a result it is often some aspect of 'neoclassicism' which is used to describe the era.
'Neoclassicism'
The works of Dryden, Pope, Swift, Addison and John Gay, as well as many of their contemporaries, exhibit qualities of order, clarity, and stylistic decorum that were formulated in the major critical documents of the age: Dryden's An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), and Pope's Essay on Criticism (1711). These works, forming the basis for modern English literary criticism, insist that 'nature' is the true model and standard of writing. This 'nature' of the Augustans, however, was not the wild, spiritual nature the romantic poets would later idealize, but nature as derived from classical theory: a rational and comprehensible moral order in the universe, demonstrating God's providential design. The literary circle around Pope considered Homer preeminent among ancient poets in his descriptions of nature, and concluded in a circuitous feat of logic that the writer who 'imitates' Homer is also describing nature. From this follows the rules inductively based on the classics that Pope articulated in his Essay on Criticism:
Those rules of old discovered, not devised,Particularly influential in the literary scene of the early eighteenth century were the two periodical publications by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Tatler (1709-11), and The Spectator (1711-12). Both writers are ranked among the minor masters of English prose style and credited with raising the general cultural level of the English middle classes. A typical representative of the post-Restoration mood, Steele was a zealous crusader for morality, and his stated purpose in The Tatler was "to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality." With The Spectator, Addison added a further purpose: to introduce the middle-class public to recent developments in philosophy and literature and thus to educate their tastes. The essays are discussions of current events, literature, and gossip often written in a highly ironic and refined style. Addison and Steele helped to popularize the philosophy of John Locke and promote the literary reputation of John Milton, among others. Although these publications each only ran two years, the influence that Addison and Steele had on their contemporaries was enormous, and their essays often amounted to a popularization of the ideas circulating among the intellectuals of the age. With these wide-spread and influential publications, the literary circle revolving around Addison, Steele, Swift and Pope was practically able to dictate the accepted taste in literature during the Augustan Age. In one of his essays for The Spectator, for example, Addison criticized the metaphysical poets for their ambiguity and lack of clear ideas, a critical stance which remained influential until the twentieth century.
Are nature still, but nature methodized.
The literary criticism of these writers often sought its justification in classical precedents. In the same vein, many of the important genres of this period were adaptations of classical forms: mock epic, translation, and imitation. A large part of Pope's work belongs to this last category, which exemplifies the artificiality of neoclassicism more thoroughly than does any other literary form of the period. In his satires and verse epistles Pope takes on the role of an English Horace, adopting the Roman poet's informal candor and conversational tone, and applying the standards of the original Augustan Age to his own time, even addressing George II satirically as "Augustus." Pope also translated the Iliad and the Odyssey, and, after concluding this demanding task, he embarked on The Dunciad (1728), a biting literary satire.
The Dunciad is a mock epic, a form of satiric writing in which commonplace subjects are described in the elevated, heroic style of classical epic. By parody and deliberate misuse of heroic language and literary convention, the satirist emphasizes the triviality of the subject, which is implicitly being measured against the highest standards of human potential. Among the best-known mock epic poems of this period in addition to The Dunciad are John Dryden's MacFlecknoe (1682), and Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1714). In The Rape of the Lock, often considered one of the highest achievements of mock epic poetry, the heroic action of epic is maintained, but the scale is sharply reduced. The hero's preparation for combat is transposed to a fashionable boat ride up the Thames, and the ensuing battle is a card game. The hero steals the titular lock of hair while the heroine is pouring coffee.
Although the mock epic mode is most commonly found in poetry, its influence was also felt in drama, most notably in John Gay's most famous work, The Beggar's Opera (1728). The Beggar's Opera ludicrously mingles elements of ballad and Italian opera in a satire on Sir Robert Walpole, England's prime minister at the time. The vehicle is opera, but the characters are criminals and prostitutes. Gay's burlesque of opera was an unprecedented stage success and centuries later inspired the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht to write one of his best-known works, Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera, 1928).
One of the most well-known mock epic works in prose from this period is Jonathan Swift's The Battle of the Books (1704), in which the old battle between the ancient and the modern writers is fought out in a library between The Bee and The Spider. Although not a mock epic, the satiric impulse is also the driving force behind Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), one of the masterpieces of the period. The four parts describe different journeys of Lemuel Gulliver; to Lilliput, where the pompous activities of the diminutive inhabitants is satirized; to Brobdingnag, a land of giants who laugh at Gulliver's tales of the greatness of England; to Laputa and Lagoda, inhabited by quack scientists and philosophers; and to the land of the Houhynhnms, where horses are civilized and men (Yahoos) behave like beasts. As a satirist Swift's technique was to create fictional speakers such as Gulliver, who utter sentiments that the intelligent reader should recognize as complacent, egotistical, stupid, or mad. Swift is recognized as a master of understated irony, and his name has become practically synonymous with the type of satire in which outrageous statements are offered in a straight-faced manner.
The Nature and Graveyard Poets
Neoclassicism was not the only literary movement at this time, however. Two schools in poetry rejected many of the precepts of decorum advocated by the neoclassical writers and anticipated several of the themes of Romanticism. The so-called nature poets, for example, treated nature not as an ordered pastoral backdrop, but rather as a grand and sometimes even forbidding entity. They tended to individualize the experience of nature and shun a methodized approach. Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, was a rural poet in an urban era, and the poems of Miscellany Poems by a Lady (1713) were often observations of nature, largely free of neoclassical conventions. Her contemporaries regarded her as little more than a female wit, but she was highly praised by the Romantic poets, particularly William Wordsworth. A further influential poet of this school was James Thomas, whose poetical work The Seasons, which appeared in separate volumes from 1726 to 1730 and beginning with Winter, was the most popular verse of the century. In his treatment of nature, he diverged from the neoclassical writers in many important ways: through sweeping vistas and specific details in contrast to circumscribed, generalized landscapes; exuberance instead of balance; and a fascination with the supernatural and the mysterious, no name just a few.
This last was also the major concern of the poets of the Graveyard School. Foremost among them was Edward Young, whose early verses were in the Augustan tradition. In his most famous work, however, The Complaint: or, Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742-45), the melancholy meditations against a backdrop of tombs and death indicate a major departure from the conventions and convictions of the preceding generation. While the neoclassicists regarded melancholia as a weakness, the pervasive mood of The Complaint is a sentimental and pensive contemplation of loss. It was nearly as successful as Thomas's The Seasons, and was translated into a number of major European languages.
The Rise of the Novel
The most important figure in terms of lasting literary influence during this period, however, was undoubtedly Daniel Defoe. An outsider from the literary establishment ruled by Pope and his cohorts, Defoe was in some ways an anomaly during a period defined as 'Augustan,' despite the fact that he was a writer of social criticism and satire before he turned to novels. He did not belong to the respected literary world, which at best ignored him and his works and at worst derided him. (In 1709, Swift for example referred to him as "the Fellow that was Pilloryed, I have forgot his name.")
The works of fiction for which Defoe is remembered, particularly Moll Flanders (1722) and Robinson Crusoe (1719), owe less to the satirical and refined impulse of the Augustan tradition, and more to a contrary tradition of early prose narrative by women, particularly Aphra Behn, Mary Delariviere Manley and Jane Barker. Since Ian Watt's influential study, The Rise of the Novel (1957), literary historians have generally considered Robinson Crusoe the first successful English novel and Defoe as one of the originators of realistic fiction in the eighteenth century, but he was deeply indebted to his female precursors and probably would never have attempted prose narrative if they had not created an audience for it in the first place.
The English novel was a product of several differing literary traditions, among them the French romance, the Spanish picaresque tale and novella, and such earlier prose models in English as John Lyly's Euphues (1579), Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia (1590) and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1684). The authors of these works collectively helped pave the way for the form of the novel as it is known today. The true pioneers of the novel form, however, were the women writers pursuing their craft in opposition to the classically refined precepts of the writers defining the Augustan Age. Particularly influential were Aphra Behn's travel narrative Oroonoko (1688) and her erotic epistolary novel Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister (1683). In Oroonoko, Behn provides numerous details of day to day life and a conversational narrative voice, while with Love Letters she pioneered the epistolary form for a longer work of fiction, over fifty years before Richardson. The political prose satires of Mary Delariviere Manley were racy exposés of high-society scandals written in the tradition of Love Letters, Behn's erotic roman à clef. Manley's novels The Secret History of Queen Zarah and the Zaraians (1705) and The New Atalantis (1709) were widely popular in their day and helped create an audience for prose narratives that was large enough to support the new breed of the professional novelist.
Eliza Haywood also began her career writing erotic tales with an ostensibly political or high society background. Her first novel, Love in Excess (1719) went through four editions in as many years. In the thirties, her writing underwent a transformation suitable to the growing moral concerns of the era, and her later novels show the influence of her male contemporaries Richardson and Fielding (this despite the fact that she may have been the author of Anti-Pamela (1741), an early attack on Richardson's first novel). Haywood's The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751) in particular belongs in a more realistic tradition of writing, bringing the action from high society into the realm of the middle class, and abandoning the description of erotic encounters.
Particularly interesting among the work of early women novelists is that of Jane Barker. Her novel Loves Intrigues: Or, The History of the Amours of Bosvil and Galesia (1713) tells in first-person narrative the psychologically realistic tale of a heroine who doesn't get her man. The portrayal of Galesia's emotional dilemma, caught in a web of modesty, social circumstances and the hero's uncertainty and indecisiveness, captures intriguing facets of psychological puzzles without providing easy answers for the readers. Galesia retreats from marriage, hardly knowing why she does so or how the situation came about, and the reader is no smarter.
Many of the elements of the modern novel attributed to Defoe -- e.g. the beginnings of psychological realism and a consistent narrative voice -- were anticipated by women writers. Defoe's contribution was in putting them all together and creating out of these elements sustained prose narratives blending physical and psychological realism. His most impressive works, such as Moll Flanders and Roxana (1724), treated characters faced with the difficulties of surviving in a world of recognizably modern economic forces. Given his capitalist philosophy, it is not surprising that Defoe's protagonists are self-reliant, resourceful individualists who express his middle-class values. In his attempt to balance individualism and economic realism with a belief in God's providence, Defoe created multi-faceted characters who combine repentance for past misdeeds with a celebration of the individual's power to survive in a hostile environment.
Although Defoe and his female contemporaries were looked down upon by the intellectual establishment represented by Pope and Swift, later developments in literary history have shown that it was they who would define the literature of a new age, and not the so-called Augustans. While the novel remains the dominant literary form of the twentieth century, mock epic is at best an element used occasionally in comedy. Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders are still widely read; The Rape of the Lock is mentioned in history books. Jonathan Swift produced an enduring classic as well with Gulliver's Travels, but despite his brilliance it is the merchant Daniel Defoe, a journalist who saw writing as "a considerable branch of the English commerce" (Essay upon Literature, 1726), who is considered the father of the English novel.
